I’m playing with a Perl package that produces date and time stamps. That’s how I discovered the server is in the EET time-zone. I want the package to show my local Manila times.
What I'm trying to discover is how the UNIX/LINUX TZ environment variable works. Manila time (PHT) is GMT/UTC + 08 (all year round, as there is no daylight saving), so I would expect to use an entry of “PHT-8”. However, this gives me a time which is 1 hour in advance of Philippine local time, and I am forced to use “PHT-7”. So I’m wondering if the server has the correct setting for GMT/UTC. If the TZ entry was an offset from the server base time, then it would change from summer to winter; EET = GMT/UTC + 02; EEST = GMT/UTC + 03; but then, logically, my entries would be “PHT-6” for EET and “PHT-5 for EEST. But they don’t work, only “PHT-7” works.
This whole system of coding seems cock-eyed, negative values where they should have used positive values. I assume this is because the US started out with entries like “PST8PDT”, instead of using “PST-08PDT”, a problem with being ego-centric?
I know something about time-zones, having flown about thirty circuits of the world and visited 45 countries, including both spheres. Can someone help me with this?
Thanks.