On Mon, 7 Mar 2005, Tom Yandell wrote:
Apologies for cross posting this. I think that this is a problem in the data in the Olson database, but as it is a binary format it is difficult to verify this. I have come across this problem using the DateTime perl module (version 0.28) whose data is generated from the Olson database.
The text versions of the Olson database are available here: http://www.twinsun.com/tz/tz-link.htm
The problem that I am experiencing is that the short name for timezones for 'Europe/London' up until 1996 were either 'GMT' or 'BST' (depending if daylight saving changes were in effect). From 1996 the name for the timezone is the rather less precise 'GMT/BST' regardless of whether daylight saving changes are in effect or not. I have attached a script that demonstrates this, and its output.
Ah, I see. I think my parser interprets the data in the Olson db incorrectly. The db does just list "GMT/BST", but apparently that means they alternate, not that there's just one short name for that zone at all times.
Parsing the Olson DB is, ahem, not exactly fun ;)
I'll fix this in the next release.
-dave
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