Re: BST Time Zone Discrepancy

On Mon, Feb 6, 2017 at 12:44 PM, Igal @ Lucee.org <igal(at)lucee(dot)org> wrote:

> Tom,
>
> Thank you for your reply:
> On 2/6/2017 12:18 PM, Tom Lane wrote:
>
> This is controlled by the timezone_abbreviations file, which if
>
> you haven't changed it lists:
>
> # CONFLICT! BST is not unique
> # Other timezones:
> # - BST: Bougainville Standard Time (Papua New Guinea)
> BST 3600 D # British Summer Time
> # (Europe/London)
>
> I haven't changed any of the config files. I can not find that file on my
> system (maybe it's in the source code only).
>
> I am using the Red Hat distribution: PostgreSQL 9.6.1 on
> x86_64-pc-linux-gnu, compiled by gcc (GCC) 4.8.5 20150623 (Red Hat
> 4.8.5-4), 64-bit
>
> pg_timezone_names shows the **current** abbreviation for the zone in question
>
> I'm not sure what you mean by "current". If this is not an issue then
> that's fine, you can ignore this message. It just seemed weird to me that
> pg_timezone_names and pg_timezone_abbrevs showed very different results for
> the same code.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Igal Sapir
> Lucee Core Developer
> Lucee.org <http://lucee.org/>
>
"Current" in this context means the abbreviation in effect at the current
time. In other words, if I were to look at my current time zone
abbreviation it would currently be PST (Pacific Standard time) but in a
couple months it would be PDT so the *view* will change depending on the
time of year.

It's important to note that there is no BST timezone. That is an
abbreviation for a timezone *offset*. Where I live we could be in PST (-08)
or PDT (-07). Currently we are in standard time but I could ask for the
current time in daylight time and PostgreSQL will give me the current point
in time with a PDT or -07 offset. Compounding the problem is the fact that
abbreviations are not globally unique. Both the United States and Australia
have Eastern and Central Standard and Daylight times, for example.

A timezone, on the other hand, encapsulates the offset as it changes both
throughout the year and historically. It is almost always preferable to use
an actual timezone by specifying it by name as in Europe/London,
America/Los_Angeles, etc.

Cheers,
Steve