John Hawkinson wrote:
the idea is to have the string displayable using a semi-standard tool.
On GNU/Linux a common tool for that is the 'file' command. For example, on Fedora 25: $ file /usr/share/zoneinfo/America/Los_Angeles /usr/share/zoneinfo/America/Los_Angeles: timezone data, version 2, 5 gmt time flags, 5 std time flags, no leap seconds, 186 transition times, 5 abbreviation chars Here the string "America/Los_Angeles" is already part of the output. Presumably the intended application for a change to the binary file format is when the binary file has been renamed or linked and someone wants to know the "originally-intended" or "canonical" name. tz follows the Unix tradition where files do not have canonical names - a design flaw to some, and a design feature to others.