Re: get_date returning false

[Derek Price]

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Ian Abbott wrote:

| On 08/04/2005 16:05, Derek Price wrote:
|
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|> Ian Abbott wrote:
|>
|> | If you want to try and reproduce it, you'll probably need to
|> set | the TZ environment variable. Mine is set to
|> "Europe/London", but if |  your libc doesn't understand that
|> format, you can try | "GMT0BST,M3.5.0,M10.5.0" or "GMT0BST"
|> instead.
|>
|> Is one of these formats likely to be portable?  I could add this
|> to the test suite, then...
|
|
| The TZ environment variable has evolved over the years.  Old Unix
| systems only supported the STD<offset>[DST[<offset>]] format like
| my "GMT0BST" above, so that format is the most portable, but the
| daylight savings rules are incorrect, except in the US (and
| Canada?).  The "daylight savings rules" part of the TZ variable
| were added in later Unix versions (I first encountered it in IBM
| AIX). If the daylight savings rules section was left off, the
| system defaulted to US daylight savings rules.  The full format is
| described in the tzset(3) manpage or the environ(5) manpage (for
| the TZ variable).
|
| The modern "Europe/London" format uses a database of timezone rules
|  over history for each geographic and/or political region.  This is
|  known as the "tz" or "zoneinfo" database and is used in most
| modern Unix systems.  Read more about it here:
| <http://www.twinsun.com/tz/tz-link.htm>.


Is there some simple, cross-platform test I could use to fall back on
GMT0BST,M3.5.0,M10.5.0 if the Europe/London timezone isn't defined or
skip the tests entirely if neither zone is enabled?

Regards,

Derek
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