Hi Ken, Thank you for answering. That solution crossed my mind, but not being thoroughly familiar with data I thought better to ask because the time zone that appears to be appropriate is from the second rule line for the same year, but in same cases there is only one rule to apply to the given year. This one line still might provide the appropriate name, but again, without knowing the data real well... Also, having a variable number of zone lines per year makes it easier to make a mistake. So, if the only cases are "one or more lines, if two or more go with the second name" that's good enough :-) You are most likely right, the present rule line LETTERS should be the right answer in case of all one-line-per-year rules, whether they appear as the first line, in the middle, or as the last (or only) line. Another thing that might be worth mentioning - the problem from the previous letter may also occur in the middle of zone rules. For example: Rule Algeria 1918 only - Mar 9 23:00s 1:00 S Rule Algeria 1919 only - Mar 1 23:00s 1:00 S Rule Algeria 1920 only - Feb 14 23:00s 1:00 S Rule Algeria 1920 only - Oct 23 23:00s 0 - Rule Algeria 1921 only - Mar 14 23:00s 1:00 S Rule Algeria 1921 only - Jun 21 23:00s 0 - Rule Algeria 1939 only - Sep 11 23:00s 1:00 S Rule Algeria 1939 only - Nov 19 1:00 0 - In this case, between 1921-Jun-21 and 1939-Sep-11, the need again arises to resort to the default zone line GMTOFF. In case of Algiers, the last 1921 SAVE is appropriate through 1939-Sep-11 (0 SAVE in GMT), but in other cases it would not be. Regards, Srdjan -----Original Message----- From: Ken Pizzini [mailto:"tz."@explicate.org] Sent: Tuesday, September 05, 2006 12:58 AM To: Srdjan Krajnalic Cc: tz@elsie.nci.nih.gov Subject: Re: Default time zone for a location (previously Europe/London) On Mon, Sep 04, 2006 at 10:12:54PM +0200, Srdjan Krajnalic wrote:
Here is a related question/suggestion:
For example, when blindly processing
Rule Ghana 1936 1942 - Sep 1 0:00 0:20 GHST Rule Ghana 1936 1942 - Dec 31 0:00 0 GMT # Zone NAME GMTOFF RULES FORMAT [UNTIL] Zone Africa/Accra -0:00:52 - LMT 1918 0:00 Ghana %s
One is to apply LMT until 1918, then apply standard time zone offset until the first rule. However, one does not know what time zone name to apply for the given location, the best one can do is use GMT+/- based on the offset.
This is the same as Paul's other answer: from the end of LMT until the beginning of the Ghana rule (1936) (and again after 1942), the "standard time" (zero savings-time offet) part of the Ghana rule is to be used, and thus the abbreviation, according to the current rules, would be "GMT", and the GMT/UTC offset would be 0:00 . And again, clarification of this in the zic manpage appears to be needed... --Ken Pizzini