Subj : Unix point?
To   : mark lewis
From : Maurice Kinal
Date : Fri Jan 14 2022 08:27 pm

Hey mark!

 ml> not all proposals are accepted or if accepted, stick around...

Too bad they missed out on the opportunity to not accept a few of them that stick around when they have no right to exist in the first place.

 ml> somewhere inside it, there is a conversion from string to
 ml> numerics and back to string again

No doubt.  However it REQUIRES the first character in the string to be either a '+' (east) or a '-' (west).  Note the REQUIRE and that is part and parcel of the offset ... which is always a string ... which is always NaN.  Dropping the '+' character ist vorboten.

  TZ=UTC date --rfc-3339=sec --date="14 Jan 22  20:27:36 0000"
  date: invalid date '14 Jan 22  20:27:36 0000'
  TZ=UTC date --rfc-3339=sec --date="14 Jan 22  20:27:36 +0000"
  2022-01-14 20:27:36+00:00

just saying ...

Life is good,
Maurice

.... Don't cry for me I have vi.
--- GNU bash, version 5.1.8(1)-release (x86_64-moosile-linux-gnu)
 * Origin: Little Mikey's Brain - Ladysmith BC, Canada (1:153/7001)

.