[tz] Tzdb and the Sunshine Protection Act

[Paul Eggert]

On 2023-03-03 02:09, Ian Abbott wrote:
> Weren't TZ strings like "EST5EDT" in use by Unix before POSIX made them 
> non-standard?

Yes, as I recall System V supported settings like TZ='EST5' and 
TZ='EST5EDT'. Time zone abbreviations had to be exactly three letters 
long, and there was no way to specify DST rules in the TZ string. I 
believe US DST rules were hard-coded in the C library, though I suppose 
some enterprising hackers in Europe may have changed the source code and 
recompiled everything.

For reasons of backward compatibility tzcode still supports this sort of 
thing, though it does not insist on exactly three letters, and it lets 
builders more easily alter the compiled-in DST rules by building with 
something like this for Europe:

   make CFLAGS='-DTZDEFRULESTRING=\",M3.5.0,M10.5.0/3\"'

as noted in the Makefile. This flexibility is a two-edged sword, though, 
and I hope that pretty much nobody needs or uses it. Users in France 
should use TZ='Europe/Paris', or at worst 
TZ='CET-1CEST,M3.5.0,M10.5.0/3'; they should not use a System V style 
setting like TZ='CET-1CES' as this will give wrong answers on most 
platforms: these platforms assume US DST rules if they assume anything 
at all.