Problem with timezones in 'date' command

Christian Bauer <[email protected]> Wed, 09 Apr 2003 15:05:05 +0200
Newsgroups gmane.comp.gnu.sh-utils.bugs
Organization NEFkom Telekommunikation GmbH & Co. KG
Message-ID <[email protected]>
Hi there,

I've got some troubles with the 'date' command and its 
timezone-interpreting.

it seems that it support not all timezone-names.
i can use CET for 'Central European Time'
and MESZ for 'Mittel Europäische Sommer Zeit'

but it seems i can't use the english version for Central European Summer 
Time (CEST)
and the german version for MEZ (Mittel Europäische Zeit)

i had a look in lib/getdate.c (sh-utils-2.0)
and here an abridgement of the code:

    { "cet",    tZONE,     -HOUR (1) }, /* Central European */
    { "met",    tZONE,     -HOUR (1) }, /* Middle European */
    { "mewt",   tZONE,     -HOUR (1) }, /* Middle European Winter */
    { "mest",   tDAYZONE,  -HOUR (1) }, /* Middle European Summer */
    { "mesz",   tDAYZONE,  -HOUR (1) }, /* Middle European Summer */

i searchad a lot in RFCs and found that there is no real standard for 
timezone-names.

but maybe you will implement these timezones. it would be very useful
for european people.

but a very bad thing is, that the date-command outputs no error if you 
have a unknown timezone.
so
date +'%s' --date="WED APR 09 12:59:11 cest 2003"
will produce the same output like
date +'%s' --date="WED APR 09 12:59:11 cet 2003"

that costs me many time to find this bug in a complex shell-script :-((((((

thanks for help,

Chris

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