Date: Wed, 09 Oct 2002 16:07:35 -0700 From: Cathy Baird <Cathy.Baird@oracle.com>

I want to explain some of the time zone names and abbreviations that are in Oracle's time zone files. Those files contain anecdotal information of various kinds, which is where I got your names and email addresses. The output sample I want to use starts like this:

TZNAME TZABBREV -------------------- ---------- Africa/Cairo LMT Africa/Cairo EET Africa/Cairo EEST Africa/Tripoli LMT Africa/Tripoli CET Africa/Tripoli CEST Africa/Tripoli EET

I see these abbreviations in the file, but I don't see explanations of any of them except LMT. What do EET, EEST, CET, and CEST stand for? (I'm guessing the S is for standard, the first E for east, the C for central. But what is the inner E for?)

In that context "ET" stands for "European Time", and "EST" stands for "European Summer Time". This is explained in the "europe" file. It does seem a bit odd that time in northern Africa is called "European time", but that's what the first contributors submitted many years ago, and we haven't had anyone tell us otherwise since then.