> You could resolve such ambiguities---There are many of them---if you had an ISO country code at hand too. Do you?
Does the software at run time? I have not rooted around. Possibly -- probably at some sites yes, and at some sites no, they didn't set it (not unlike TZ and _TZ!). The one thing I am sure I have is a TZ value, either pre-existing, or passed to me as a character string that I then use to set TZ. I guess the software is not in the business of mind-reading people who use incorrect or obsolete time zone abbreviations. GIGO and all that. If they tell me EST and it's really AEST, well, no my fault, mon. strftime() %Z will probably report EST. GIGO. I see here http://www.timeanddate.com/library/abbreviations/timezones/ that AMT means +4 in Armenia and -4 in the Amazon. But does it matter to my software? If a customer specifies TZ=AMT4AMST won't localtime() work correctly, adjusting UTC by 3 or 4 hours on the assumption that he is in Armenia (and not be confused by the possibility he is actually in the Amazon)? I hope not to have this thread get into a whole digression on the vagaries of local time in general. My real questions are - what *sort* of value is supposed to be in timezone_name? Something like EST, or, for example, something like "Eastern Standard Time," or ... ? - assuming e.g. EST is what is supposed to be in timezone_name, what is the best way of getting it from TZ to timezone_name? I'm going to start taking after Gil. I'm going to start signing my posts "I hate local time." Charles -----Original Message----- From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU] On Behalf Of John Gilmore Sent: Thursday, September 05, 2013 4:40 PM To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU Subject: Re: timezone_name? If you are thinking in international rather than local American terms some timezone names are problematic/ambiguous. An example. Australia has three time zones: o AEST, Australian Eastern Standard Time, which becomes AEDT, Australian Eastern Daylight Time for part of the year, with conventions reversed from those of the Northern Hemisphere; o ACST, Australian Central Standard Time, and ACDT, Australian Central Daylight Time; and o AWST, Australian Western Standard Time, without an AWDT. So far, so good; but the 'A' prefix is fairly recent and not always used; and when it is omitted EST, EDT, CST, and CDT are internationally ambiguous. You could resolve such ambiguities---There are many of them---if you had an ISO country code at hand too. Do you? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
