Re: Timezone handling in date command

[James Youngman]

On Thu, Feb 19, 2009 at 12:11 PM, Burba, Viktor
<address@hidden> wrote:
> Dear guys,
>
> I have expierenced the following unexpeted behaviour by using the "date"
> command on SuSE SLES10(x86_64):
>
> I have timezone setup to Asia/Dubai (GMT+4), which has short name GST
> (Gulf Standart time)
>
> #date
> Thu Feb 20 20:00:00 GST 2009
> #date --utc -d "now"
> Thu Feb 20 16:00:00 UTC 2009          - OK  UTC+4
> #date --utc -d "Thu Feb 20 20:00:00 GST 2009"
> Thu Feb 20 10:00:00 UTC 2009          - ???  UTC+10
>
> I think here some name problems with GST. Because there are four
> timezones with the same short name GST
>
> Guam Standart Time UTC+10
> Gulf Standart Time UTC+4
> Greenland Standart Time UTC-3
> South Georgia Time UTC-2
>
> Here looks like date uses UTC+10 for name GST, which is also timezone
> GST but Guam Standart time and not Gulf Standart time.
> How can I force date to use another time offset for GST name?

It is probably better to use TZ=Asia/Dubai.   See
$ info coreutils "Specifying time zone rules"

James.