From: cziwkga AT ulcc DOT ac DOT uk (Kevin Ashley) Newsgroups: comp.os.msdos.djgpp Subject: Re: Zoneinfo bug in EMACS? (Eli?) Date: 17 Apr 1997 17:58:37 GMT Organization: University of London Computer Centre Lines: 32 Distribution: world Message-ID: <5j5ocd$g56@calypso.ulcc.ac.uk> References: Reply-To: k DOT ashley AT ulcc DOT ac DOT uk NNTP-Posting-Host: silver-e.ulcc.ac.uk To: djgpp AT delorie DOT com DJ-Gateway: from newsgroup comp.os.msdos.djgpp Precedence: bulk In article , Eli Zaretskii writes: |> |>On 14 Apr 1997, Ruiter de M wrote: |> |>> I have found, that, for EMACS to know my time zone, I _have_ to put my |>> zoneinfo-files in C:/BIN/GCC/ZONEINFO. |> |>Thanks for the report. This is due to a bug in the library function |>`tzset' (more accurately, in one of its internal subroutines): it |>caches the value of the zoneinfo directory, .... Given your explanation, Eli, I wouldn't categorise this as a bug in tzset and friends - the implementation is a perfectly sensible one. The timezone routines can get called millions of times by programs that need to process date and time strings and caching info such as the directory, and the zone files themselves, is the only way they can offer acceptable performance. The problem is surely with EMACs and its arcane method of building itself. There are no doubt other gotchas lurking somewhere involving routines which maintain internal state. The most sensible patch might be a single one to add a new function to tell the tz routines to forget their internally-saved names, which EMACS could call on startup. A patch like that might conceivably be useful to very long-running programs as well, whose environment might change around them. (Although in DOS, I'm not sure how this would happen.) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Kevin Ashley K DOT Ashley AT Ulcc DOT ac DOT uk Development Manager http://www.ulcc.ac.uk/staff/Kevin+Ashley University of London Computer Centre. ...ukc!ncdlab!K.Ashley This is not a signature