From owner-freebsd-questions Wed Apr 7 6:15: 5 1999 Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from alpha.comkey.com.au (alpha.comkey.com.au [203.9.152.215]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with SMTP id 74268157BA for ; Wed, 7 Apr 1999 06:14:50 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from gjb-freebsd@gba.oz.au) Received: (qmail 15955 invoked by uid 1001); 7 Apr 1999 13:10:32 -0000 Message-ID: <19990407131032.15954.qmail@alpha.comkey.com.au> X-Posted-By: GBA-Post 1.04 06-Feb-1999 X-PGP-Fingerprint: 5A91 6942 8CEA 9DAB B95B C249 1CE1 493B 2B5A CE30 Date: Wed, 07 Apr 1999 23:10:31 +1000 From: Greg Black To: Greg Lehey Cc: FreeBSD Questions Subject: Re: Timezone question References: <19990404044642.A60884@sr.se> <19990404132026.T2142@lemis.com> <19990405005423.480.qmail@alpha.comkey.com.au> <19990406090912.V2142@lemis.com> In-reply-to: <19990406090912.V2142@lemis.com> of Tue, 06 Apr 1999 09:09:12 +0930 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG > >> $ date > >> Sun Apr 4 13:09:34 CST 1999 > >> $ TZ=Europe/Stockholm date > >> Sun Apr 4 05:39:43 CEST 1999 > >> $ TZ=America/Chicago date > >> Sat Apr 3 21:39:54 CST 1999 > >> > >> Note the imaginative time zone abbreviations, some of which I think > >> are just plain wrong. > > > > It could be argued that date(1) is wrong to display those > > alphabetic timezones and that it ought to change over to the > > same numeric form that is now almost universally used in email > > date headers: > > > > $ gbdate > > Mon, 05 Apr 1999 10:47:12 +1000 > > $ TZ=Europe/Stockholm gbdate > > Mon, 05 Apr 1999 02:47:14 +0200 > > $ TZ=America/Chicago gbdate > > Sun, 04 Apr 1999 19:47:24 -0500 > > It could be argued. Notice that the sign here is the inverse of what > System V does in its time zones (we're -9.5, the (continental) USA is > between +4 and +7). The sign I showed there is the widely-accepted form used in email date headers, and has nothing to do with SysV/BSD differences. > > This tells readers, both human and automated, exactly which > > timezone we're talking about > > Well, no, it tells the offset of the time zone from UTC, no more. It > doesn't say, for example, that I'm in South Australia, which has DST, > and not in NT, which doesn't. Presumably you know where you are and what the time is. The point here is for other people to know what the clock on your wall is saying and how to convert that to the their local time. This is provided by the numeric timezones, and poorly or not at all by the alphabetic ones. (And nobody else actually cares if your wall clock time is daylight savings or not.) > It would probably be good to output both time zone name and current > offset: > > $ TZ=Europe/Lisbon date > Tue Apr 6 00:38:00 WEST 1999 (+0100) > $ TZ=Europe/London date > Tue Apr 6 00:38:04 BST 1999 (+0100) Yes, I'd go along with that, provided it was changed around to follow the existing precedent with email date headers, which would give something like: Wed, 07 Apr 1999 23:06:32 +1000 (EST) But hey, it was only a suggestion ... -- Greg Black To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message