From: Alan Franzoni Date: Fri, 27 Jun 2014 08:24:23 GMT Subject: Re: [PATCH] Fix: wrong offset for CET timezone Message-ID: In-Reply-To: <166360487.125996.1403820532765.JavaMail.zimbra@dewire.com> On Fri, Jun 27, 2014 at 12:08 AM, Robin Rosenberg wrote: > 1 hour in winter and 2 in summer, although some standards seem to say > that summer time is really called CEST, computers apply DST to CET in summer. > > $ TZ=UTC date > Tor 26 Jun 2014 22:08:01 UTC > > $ TZ=CET date > Fre 27 Jun 2014 00:08:05 CEST Like Andreas pointed out, this seems an implementation detail. CET is still +1, while CEST is +2. If you take a look at the official IANA tzdata: http://www.iana.org/time-zones/repository/releases/tzdata2014e.tar.gz For europe, it's something like "std: CET" and "dst: CEST". The current doc is not correct either; we should write something like "either +1 or +2 depending on DST" (there seems to be a 2dst as well which gets +3 offset); Usually the best way of handling timezones is to use the proper location format (e.g. TZ='Europe/Rome') and then letting the system pick the proper offset; we might say something like ' "Europe/Rome" which is +1 in winter ' in the doc, but I'd say that's nitpicking. -- contact me at public@[mysurname].eu