Oct. 7, 1997
4:18 p.m.
On Tue, 7 Oct 1997, John Cowan wrote:
The following patch adds a "magic number" to compiled zoneinfo files. The affected files are zic.c and tzfile.h. In essence, the first four bytes of zoneinfo files are set to "\0x14\0x1a\0x54\0x5a", which in ASCII is "^T^ZTZ". This patch is trivial, but will assist in the automatic recognition of zoneinfo files by the Unix "file" command.
Excellent idea, but I'd suggest choosing a magic number based on the principles outlined in RFC 2083 section 12.11. I propose: \211 T Z \r \n ^Z \n as a magic number. - Chris