TZFILE(5) Linux Programmer's Manual TZFILE(5)NAMEtzfile - time zone information
SYNOPSIS
#include <tzfile.h>
DESCRIPTION
This page describes the structure of timezone files as commonly found
in /usr/lib/zoneinfo or /usr/share/zoneinfo.
The time zone information files used by tzset(3) begin with the magic
characters "TZif" to identify then as time zone information files, fol‐
lowed by sixteen bytes reserved for future use, followed by six four-
byte values of type long, written in a "standard" byte order (the high-
order byte of the value is written first). These values are, in order:
tzh_ttisgmtcnt
The number of UTC/local indicators stored in the file.
tzh_ttisstdcnt
The number of standard/wall indicators stored in the file.
tzh_leapcnt
The number of leap seconds for which data is stored in the file.
tzh_timecnt
The number of "transition times" for which data is stored in the
file.
tzh_typecnt
The number of "local time types" for which data is stored in the
file (must not be zero).
tzh_charcnt
The number of characters of "timezone abbreviation strings"
stored in the file.
The above header is followed by tzh_timecnt four-byte values of type
long, sorted in ascending order. These values are written in "stan‐
dard" byte order. Each is used as a transition time (as returned by
time(2)) at which the rules for computing local time change. Next come
tzh_timecnt one-byte values of type unsigned char; each one tells which
of the different types of "local time" types described in the file is
associated with the same-indexed transition time. These values serve
as indices into an array of ttinfo structures that appears next in the
file; these structures are defined as follows:
struct ttinfo {
long tt_gmtoff;
int tt_isdst;
unsigned int tt_abbrind;
};
Each structure is written as a four-byte value for tt_gmtoff of type
long, in a standard byte order, followed by a one-byte value for
tt_isdst and a one-byte value for tt_abbrind. In each structure,
tt_gmtoff gives the number of seconds to be added to UTC, tt_isdst
tells whether tm_isdst should be set by localtime(3), and tt_abbrind
serves as an index into the array of timezone abbreviation characters
that follow the ttinfo structure(s) in the file.
Then there are tzh_leapcnt pairs of four-byte values, written in stan‐
dard byte order; the first value of each pair gives the time (as
returned by time(2)) at which a leap second occurs; the second gives
the total number of leap seconds to be applied after the given time.
The pairs of values are sorted in ascending order by time.
Then there are tzh_ttisstdcnt standard/wall indicators, each stored as
a one-byte value; they tell whether the transition times associated
with local time types were specified as standard time or wall clock
time, and are used when a timezone file is used in handling POSIX-style
timezone environment variables.
Finally, there are tzh_ttisgmtcnt UTC/local indicators, each stored as
a one-byte value; they tell whether the transition times associated
with local time types were specified as UTC or local time, and are used
when a timezone file is used in handling POSIX-style timezone environ‐
ment variables.
Localtime uses the first standard-time ttinfo structure in the file (or
simply the first ttinfo structure in the absence of a standard-time
structure) if either tzh_timecnt is zero or the time argument is less
than the first transition time recorded in the file.
NOTES
This manual page documents <tzfile.h> in the glibc source archive, see
timezone/tzfile.h.
It seems that timezone uses tzfile internally, but glibc refuses to
expose it to userspace. This is most likely because the standardised
functions are more useful and portable, and actually documented by
glibc. It may only be in glibc just to support the non-glibc-main‐
tained timezone data (which is maintained by some other entity).
SEE ALSOtime(3), gettimeofday(3), tzset(3), ctime(3)COLOPHON
This page is part of release 3.23 of the Linux man-pages project. A
description of the project, and information about reporting bugs, can
be found at http://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/.
1996-06-05 TZFILE(5)
