Robert Elz wrote:
And is totally irrelevant,
It doesn't seem *totally* irrelevant. It's true that we're not strictly limited to abbreviations that will fit into a POSIX-TZ value. But there are two reasons why it's a good idea to stick to that range. Firstly, we have a field in the tzfile which is specified to be in POSIX-TZ format. If our abbreviations don't match the POSIX spec then we can't properly fill that field: we either don't use it (and thus don't get the benefit of that facility) or we fill it with a non-conforming value (which won't necessarily work). Secondly, and more relevant to what we were discussing, the POSIX standard effectively determines a range of abbreviations that code handling time in a POSIX environment can expect to see and must be prepared to handle. Sticking within that range ensures a high degree of compatibility, though not as high as sticking just to letters. I note that the Theory section on abbreviations describes the POSIX rules and expresses a preference for using only letters. It also mentions the issue of spaces breaking space splitting. -zefram