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TZFILE(5) File Formats Manual TZFILE(5)

tzfiletime zone information

#include <tzfile.h>

The time zone information files used by tzset(3) begin with bytes reserved for future use, followed by four 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_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 "time zone 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 ``standard'' 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 GMT, tt_isdst tells whether tm_isdst should be set by localtime(3) and tt_abbrind serves as an index into the array of time zone abbreviation characters that follow the ttinfo structure(s) in the file.

Then there are tzh_leapcnt pairs of four-byte values, written in standard 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 number of leap seconds to be applied after the given time. The pairs of values are sorted in ascending order by time.

Finally 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 time zone file is used in handling POSIX-style time zone environment 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.

ctime(3)

The tzfile file format appeared in 4.3BSD-Tahoe.

4.4BSD-Lite2 June 8, 1993 TZFILE(5)