On 08/12/11 14:39, Steven Abner wrote:
For MST, let's first state that yes there are 8 zones that have conflicts. In the case of MST, there is no conflict. If let's say Denver in July did output a timestamp string of 12:00 MST, then it is a sure thing that the computer output the correct conversion to MST, or if it didn't, a sure thing that the use of strftime() and/or mktime() has a bug in that system
There's an additional problem. People mis-write times. I've missed meeting because the meeting organiser said it was "9am PST" but since that was shortly after the clocks changed in spring I was out by an hour. Well, I would have been except that I asked for clarification and told it was "standard time" which the meeting organiser took to be PST in winter and PDT in summer. Some years later I had the same problem with another person who assumed that GMT simply meant UK local time which, of course, it does not. Not only do you have to guess at what the abbreviation might mean, you also have to guess at what was in the mind of the person writing the time, regardless of the locale they are from and the locale whose time they are writing down. It's hard enough for humans to get this right with all the context that they have, it's impossible for software to get it right. jch