Guy Harris wrote:
1981 called, they want their UNIX file name limitations back.
tzdb's 14-character limit is like Twitter's 140-character limit: although the exact value is a relic of antique technology, the brevity is still worthwhile. Long ago Unix stored the file under the name "East-Saskatche" and this file was accessible by calling 'open' with the name "East-Saskatchewan", so the too-long file name still worked well enough for tzdb purposes. Later, some Unix maintainers caused these 'open' calls to fail on some platforms, thus breaking the name. I doubt whether tzdb users noticed or cared, as they stopped using the name years ago. The maintenance burden of the name Canada/East-Saskatchewan (evidenced partly in this thread) appears to be greater than the backward-compatibility benefit of keeping the name (as it is a misnomer and is not really used outside of test cases). So I'm inclined to comment out its line in "backward". Proposed patches attached.