[tz] Some rules in tz specification files seem to be applied (by zic) outside of their declared period of applicability

Parsifal Herzog parsifal.herzog at parz.ca
Thu Jan 17 02:10:34 UTC 2019


On 2019-01-16 4:41 a.m., Michael H Deckers wrote:
> In the case at hand, the abbreviation changes from SAST
>    (for South African Standard Time) to CAT (Central African Time).
>    This change is appropriate at the date when Namibia became
>    independent from South Africa.

Michael, this does not answer my question - I am sure that you do
not mean to imply that zic has read the comment line and somehow
"knows" that after independence, the time zone abbreviation is going
to be "CAT".

To make my question perfectly clear, I am going to go through this
Africa/Windhoek example step by step. Please bear with me if
some things I write are self-evident - I want to show my reasoning,
in case somewhere I have made a false step or assumption.

Before I do that, perhaps it would be helpful if you know the context
in which my question arose: I have a program which parses the
Olsen Tz data base textual specification, and produces time tables,
as does zic. The context is in handling worldwide historical dates
and times, so that other issues such as Gregorian/Julian transitions
need to be accounted for.

Recently there have been changes to the zone file specifications,
such as negative dst and times, so while changing my program to
accommodate these, I noticed that it was inserting standard time
transitions in periods where no applicable zone Rule existed.

I wondered how this could be - shouldn't it be an error to leave
a gap in the specification? Investigating, I found that there
were very many such cases, and even a few zone lines that had
no applicable rule over the entire period covered by the zone
line.

The standard time transitions inserted to cover these gaps
were fine (gmtoffset of the zone, and save = 0), but the
timzone abbreviation was not so easy to determine - it
could come from the zone line, i.e. "MSK/MSD", but more often
the zone line had a format specification, and thus requires an
applicable rule to work unambiugously. So the program "made up"
a zone abbreviation using some heuristics, and it output a
table of its guesses, which I could review and fix by hand if
necessary.

This was not very satisfactory, so I thought I must be missing
something and I asked "What would zic do?". I got the source, and
I didn't get much farther. My program is written in Python,
zic is in C, and carries a lot of historical baggage that I
am not familiar with.

So then, on with my exposition, and hopefully the question
will become clear enough to be answered:


In this specific case I am using, I am asking: Where in the
timezone specification of the Africa/Windhoek zone is it written
that the abbreviation is changed from "SAST" to "CAT" as of
Wed Mar 21 1990?

As I interpret the zic manual page, the Zone line

	2:00    -    SAST    1990 Mar 21 # independence

Specifies that as of 1990 Mar 21, midnight, the gmtoffset = 2:00,
dst save = 0, and the timezone abbreviation = SAST, is no longer
in effect. As of that time, the next Zone line:

         2:00    Namibia    %s

comes into effect. This specifies that the gmtoffset shall be 2 hours,
as of 1990 March 20 midnight, and that from that time onwards, one or
more of the rules named "Namibia" will be applied according to their
respective periods of applicability to determine changes of
dst offset and timezone abbreviation, and when they will occur.

Here again, for this example, are all of those rules:

Rule    Namibia    1994    only    -    Mar    21          0:00 -1:00    WAT
Rule    Namibia    1994    2017    -    Sep    Sun>=1      2:00  0       CAT
Rule    Namibia    1995    2017    -    Apr    Sun>=1      2:00 -1:00    WAT

As I read it, according to the zic manual page, NONE of these rules apply to the
years 1990 through 1993. So the dst offset and abbreviation are undefined in
those years. Yet zic, by some unspecified logic, has chosen the second rule,
and entered the transition (according to zdump):

Africa/Windhoek  Tue Mar 20 22:00:00 1990 UT =
			Wed Mar 21 00:00:00 1990 CAT isdst=0 gmtoff=7200

So, what is this (so its seems to me) unspecified logic?
This might read something like:

     During a time period where there is no applicable rule,
     the dst offset shall be ____
     and the time zone abbreviation shall be _____.

Where _____ is the answer I am looking for.


Thank you, Parsifal






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