[tz] [PATCH v2 2/4] zic.8: s/time zone/timezone/ for consistency

Paul Eggert eggert at cs.ucla.edu
Wed Nov 23 18:42:10 UTC 2022


On 2022-11-23 05:48, Alejandro Colomar wrote:
> This adds consistency across other manual pages, and with POSIX.1.

The tzdb project documentation uses the phrase "time zone" for the 
ordinary English meaning that you'll see in time zone maps or in phrases 
like "time zone abbreviation", whereas it uses the single word 
"timezone" to mean the POSIX idea of a set of rules that map UTC to 
local time. So, for example, this proposed change:

> -A time zone abbreviation uses a
> +A timezone abbreviation uses a

would not be right, because an time zone abbreviation like "PDT" doesn't 
denote a set of rules like a TZ string would.

I suggest modifying other Linux manual pages to be consistent with this 
usage, rather than trying to use the single word "timezone" for both 
usages. Quite possibly most other Linux manual pages typically use 
"timezone" because they're typically talking about the POSIX meaning, 
which would mean they're already OK.


More information about the tz mailing list