Hi,

I am a Delphi programmer and am working on a time zone problem. In the Olson database I'm having trouble differentiating between times that are strictly standard and those that include summer time / daylight savings. Is there a standard in the code for differentiating these? Most of it is fairly simple to understand but I am mystified by some of the abbreviations in the rule changes. For instance:

# Rule NAME FROM TO TYPE IN ON AT SAVE LETTER/S
Rule Finland 1942 only - Apr 3 0:00 1:00 S
Rule Finland 1942 only - Oct 3 0:00 0 -
Rule Finland 1981 1982 - Mar lastSun 2:00 1:00 S
Rule Finland 1981 1982 - Sep lastSun 3:00 0 -
# Zone NAME GMTOFF RULES FORMAT [UNTIL]
Zone Europe/Helsinki 1:39:52 - LMT 1878 May 31
   1:39:52 - HMT 1921 May    # Helsinki Mean Time
   2:00 Finland EE%sT 1983
   2:00 EU EE%sT

What is the % symbol I keep seeing in the code for? For instance, in "2:00 EU EE%sT" is "EE%sT" Eastern European Standard Time? I take this to mean that Finland is currently on EU rules with a UTC offset of +2. Every now and then I also find something like this:

"2:00 1:00 EEST 1989 Sep 24 2:00s"

Does this line mean that I add 1 hour to the 2:00 hours UTC? Or is this correction already included in the 2 hours?

Thanks!

Sincerely,

Curtis Manwaring