[PING^3] RFC [PATCH] BZ#1077902: New API gettimezone

[Rich Felker]

On Sat, May 31, 2014 at 04:02:15AM +0800, P J P wrote:
> > string at the end of the tzdata file.  It is not any other line from the 
> > tzdata file.  It is not in the tzdata file anywhere.  You are asking for 
> > something that does not exist.
> 
> Â  Again you are overlooking the _fact_ that if you ask users to
> define TZ variable, they are in most certainty, going to define it
> as the closet approximation _available_ to them. Most likely the
> last line from the tzdata file.
> 
> If the theoretical accuracy and precision that you seek does not
> exist, why not provide what is available and what we can?

The "last line of the TZ file" is what's expected to be in effect past
times represented/representable in the zoneinfo file. There's no
reason to believe it corresponds to what was in effect at a particular
time the user might be interested in. It's fairly likely that it
corresponds to what's in effect "right now". But I think it's a really
bad idea to encourage further use of such zone specifications, which
are inadequate to describe many world timezones.

Rich