[tz] Etc/GMT timezone offsets are inverted

Paul Eggert eggert at cs.ucla.edu
Tue Jul 11 14:17:55 UTC 2017


Pedro A. López-Valencia wrote:
> I just noticed that all GMT+- timezones are inverted

There is a comment about this in the "etcetera" file:

# Be consistent with POSIX TZ settings in the Zone names,
# even though this is the opposite of what many people expect.
# POSIX has positive signs west of Greenwich, but many people expect
# positive signs east of Greenwich.  For example, TZ='Etc/GMT+4' uses
# the abbreviation "-04" and corresponds to 4 hours behind UT
# (i.e. west of Greenwich) even though many people would expect it to
# mean 4 hours ahead of UT (i.e. east of Greenwich).


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