Posix Timezone format
Guy Harris
guy at alum.mit.edu
Fri Nov 14 00:30:47 UTC 2008
On Nov 13, 2008, at 3:05 PM, Louis Guindon wrote:
> My goal is to provide a user interface showing the information
> derived from the TZ zone name. Based on the selected TZ zone name by
> the user, I will assign the corresponding POSIX time zone string to
> the Linux /tmp/TZ file. This way the local time will show up
> properly for the user.
I.e., you're trying to make an application to give the user a list of
time zones, let them select a time zone, and make that the system time
zone?
Note that most if not all Linux systems use the Olson time zone
database, so they are not required to have a POSIX time zone string as
the time zone setting.
> However, I am having difficulty to find a reliable source for POSIX
> time zone string representation for each defined time zone in the
> Olson database.
There isn't necessarily a POSIX time zone string representation for
each defined time zone. POSIX time zone strings can't represent an
arbitrary Olson-style time zone - they can't, for example, handle time
zones where the rules change from year to year.
> I don’t know if there is an alternative way, but I am also wandering
> if the TZ time zone name can used directly without going through the
> POSIX representation of the time zone.
On many UN*Xes, it can (Solaris, most if not all other SVR4
derivatives, most if not all Linux distributions,
{Free,Net,Open,DragonFly}BSD, Mac OS X/iPhone OS).
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