[tz] tzdb timezone names/identifiers and links

Guy Harris guy at alum.mit.edu
Thu Feb 28 17:18:38 UTC 2019


On Feb 28, 2019, at 8:33 AM, Brian Inglis <Brian.Inglis at SystematicSw.ab.ca> wrote:

> If we disassociate the ids from locations how does anyone make any sense or use
> of the data?

The ID for my location refers to a city about 500 km from my location.  How does anyone make sense of that?

Fortunately the OS on my laptop doesn't require me to say "America/Los_Angeles" to it; it's happy to let me specify the city I'm in, if I don't just let it select the tzdb region based on where it thinks I am right now.  The same applies to the OS on my smartphone.

And the OS on at least one of the virtual machines I have also lets me specify a nearby city, although not the city I'm in - maybe they didn't pick the biggest city database from GeoNames, so that the nearby city is in the database but the city I'm in isn't.  (The OS's name is "Ubuntu" and its version number is 18.04.)

IDs are associated with *a* location, but not necessarily with the location you're at, or even a location near where you're at, and not necessarily with a location in your country.


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