Re: 780 files in /usr/share/zoneinfo/

[deloptes <deloptes@gmail.com>]

Greg Wooledge wrote:

> This is completely inaccurate.  Time zones were not devised by drawing
> equally-spaced meridian lines along the globe.  They were invented
> by political entities.  They aren't static, either -- they change
> from time to time, as political regimes change.
> 
> Time zones are not tied to the geography of the earth, nor even to
> political boundaries.  There are places that have two competing time
> zones, one time zone for some of the people living there, and another
> for the rest of the people living there.
> 
> Time zones aren't guaranteed to deviate from UTC by an integral number
> of hours.  There are some that are off by a fraction of an hour.
> 
> There are time zones pairings that differ from each other part of the
> year, and concide with each other the rest of the year.
> 
> Try to think of the strangest, most obtuse, most ridiculous rules you
> can -- real time zones are WORSE than that.

It is a total mess - if it wasn't those files, it were be chaos.

In fact I admire people 3000y ago could manage time better than we do.