July 13, 1998
6:48 p.m.
Has anyone used the zoneinfo data to parse date strings into tm structures, e.g. "6/2/69 1:00pm CST" or "Jun 2 69 13:00 CST"?
Most of the date parsing can be done by routines such as "strptime()", as implemented on many UNIXes. The tricky part is interpreting the time zone name - and that's especially tricky given that, apparently, there's an "EST" in both North America and Australia. Also, there's no place in a "struct tm" to record the *name* of a time zone; at most, some have fields that can store the offset from UTC and the "daylight savings time is in effect" flag.