Daylight Saving Time

[Ian Donaldson]

> The current version (USG at least) of localtime in UNIX
> allows you to set whether a time zome has Daylight Saving Time, but
> no obvious method of changing the days on which DST takes effect.
> 
Thats not the only problem - how do you cater for timezones that aren't
a multiple of 1 hour distance from GMT?

The TZ variable allows saying  TZ=xxxyzzz  where xxx is the normal
name of the timezone (without DST), y is the number of HOURS from GMT
(that has to be changed in heaps of shellscripts when daylight savings
starts and ends), and zzz is the name of the timezone when DST is in effect.
 
I rekon that the BSD way of keeping the timezone info in the kernel is more
sensible, as it guarantees uniformity for all processes in the system.  Perhaps
a cron script particular to each machines' timezone can be used to alter
DST at appropriate times of the year for those countries that seem
to keep changing DST (by adb'ing the kernel? - Yuk!)

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			    Ian Donaldson

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