[tz] Irish Standard Time vs Irish Summer Time

[Paul Eggert]

Christos Zoulas wrote:

> If we are going to standardize those two, I think that tm_zone
> should become an array instead of a pointer, or at least the "char
> *" pointer lifetime and ownership should be defined.

This is all doable. An API standard could allow tm_zone to be either a char 
array or a char const * pointer, with applications not supposed to care. This 
would allow existing implementations and would allow the alternative 
implementation that you're thinking of. If tm_zone is a pointer, its lifetime 
would be that of the corresponding timezone_t object (for the new API with 
localtime_rz etc.) for until the next call to tzset (either explicit or implied) 
with a different TZ value (for the traditional API with localtime_r etc.).

> if we
> are changing tm_zone, then tm_gmtoff should be an int not a long.
> Does anyone remember why it was chosen to be a long? 16 bit integers
> on pdp 11? Does "struct tm" go that far back?

When tm_gmtoff was designed, 'long' was the only portable type that was 
guaranteed to be wide enough to hold practical UT offsets. To standardize 
tm_gmtoff we should probably invent a typedef for it, presumably 'gmtoff_t'. 
That way, new implementations could use (say) 'int_least32_t' for it if they 
wanted to.