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From: Greg Lehey <grog@lemis.de>
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Organisation: LEMIS, Schellnhausen 2, 36325 Feldatal, Germany
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Subject: Re: Call for national time locales
In-Reply-To: <199611300748.IAA01098@uriah.heep.sax.de> from J Wunsch at "Nov 30, 96 08:48:37 am"
To: joerg_wunsch@uriah.heep.sax.de
Date: Sun, 1 Dec 1996 09:43:35 +0100 (MET)
Cc: FreeBSD-current@FreeBSD.ORG (FreeBSD current users)
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J Wunsch writes:
> As [?KOI8-R?] wrote:
>
>> Well, German is your locale and you can do what you want with it,
>> I can only warn you that if you will use unpadded two letters,
>> you'll break too many programs.
>
> Hmm.  Just wondering... a quick poll on as many machines as i could
> get my hands on yielded:
>
> j@snaily 109% uname -sr
> UNIX_SV 4.2
> j@snaily 110% date
> Sam Nov 30 06:44:23 MEZ 1996
>
> j@blue 649% uname -sr
> AIX 2
> j@blue 650% date
> Sa 30 Nov 08:26:41 1996
>
> j@sol 1% uname -sr
> SunOS 5.3
> j@sol 2% date
> Samstag, 30. November 1996, 08:44:24 Uhr MET
>
> j@vzentr 9% uname -sr
> HP-UX B.10.00
> j@vzentr 10% date
> Sa., 30. Nov. 1996, 08:41:40
>
> Not a single system uses the same as another one. :-O
>
> What do the other German folks think?  I'm leaning towards either the
> SVR4 or the HP/UX approach.

If I understand the problem, it's not so much programming support in
the software that's the problem: it's the POSIX spec which specifies 3
characters, so you could always trip over new software which has a
problem with it.  If that's correct, I rather like the sneaky HP-UX
solution to the problem.  On the other hand, if AIX can do it, why
can't others?

Which is the SVR4 system?  Is that SINIX?  I don't know if that
sanctions the three-letter abbreviations or not.  My feeling is that
it doesn't.

Greg