Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!mcvax!enea!erix!per
From: per@erix.UUCP (Per Hedeland)
Newsgroups: comp.bugs.4bsd
Subject: Questionable optimization of localtime(3) in 4.3BSD?
Message-ID: <1570@erix.UUCP>
Date: 1 Mar 88 11:19:15 GMT
Reply-To: per@erix.UUCP (Per Hedeland)
Organization: Ericsson Telecom, Stockholm, Sweden
Lines: 14

Between 4.2 and 4.3, localtime(3) was optimized by giving it a "memory", so
it wouldn't have to gettimeofday(2) to obtain the timezone info on each call.
However, one result of this is that /usr/ucb/lisp as distributed will always
give the time in LBT (Local Berkeley Time).  Of course, remaking it "solves"
the problem by hardwiring in one's own local timezone.

I gather that this behaviour is essentially unchanged by the new ctime
package posted to .ucb-fixes. Is there a "good" solution to this problem?
I guess the simplest way out is just to decree that packages creating
executables by dumping mustn't call localtime/ctime before the dump...

Yours for side-effect-free functions :-)
Per Hedeland
per@erix.ericsson.se  or  ...{mcvax,uunet}!enea!erix!per