Yes, it is true that my parse routine does use standard IO. Also it is simple minded about "shell". It doesn't know about quoting or shell escapes: thus the new expanded TZ will break as there is a semi-colon in the TZ string. Oh well, what do you want for free? BTW, the init parser for SystemV Release 3.1 is not very smart either. I do like the idea of a single place for establishing the TZ for a system. It makes it very easy for new administrators. Another problem with a routine to read and parse /etc/TIMEZONE is what does one do for non-ATT shells (c shell and others) the setting of TZ in the environment differs. That's why having /etc/init set things up is good. That guarentees a "standard environment". It is true someone could diddle with it, but I am more concerned with naive users than others.