[tz] Java & Rearguard

Ian Abbott abbotti at mev.co.uk
Thu Jun 6 09:51:46 UTC 2019


On 06/06/2019 03:33, Steve Summit wrote:
> Stephen Colebourne wrote:
> (As an aside: Is it my imagination, or was there a time when C
> had an array of 1, 2, or maybe more than 2 time zone strings,
> and you used tm_isdst as an index into them, such that tm_isdst
> functioned as a sort of an opaque token even though it had "dst"
> in its name?)

It's not your imagination.  It still exists in the POSIX specs as the 
tzname array, but it is either 2 elements long or unspecified length, 
depending where you look:

(1) http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/functions/tzname.html

extern char *tzname[2];

The tzset() function shall set the external variable tzname as follows:

tzname[0] = "std";
tzname[1] = "dst";

where std and dst are as described in XBD Environment Variables.


(2) http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/basedefs/time.h.html

extern char  *tzname[];

The value of tm_isdst shall be positive if Daylight Savings Time is in 
effect, 0 if Daylight Savings Time is not in effect, and negative if the 
information is not available.


(From the above, it seems to me that tzname[0] applies when tm_isdst==0, 
and tzname[1] applies when tm_isdst>0.)

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