1 .\" Copyright 1993 David Metcalfe (david@prism.demon.co.uk)
3 .\" %%%LICENSE_START(VERBATIM)
4 .\" Permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim copies of this
5 .\" manual provided the copyright notice and this permission notice are
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8 .\" Permission is granted to copy and distribute modified versions of this
9 .\" manual under the conditions for verbatim copying, provided that the
10 .\" entire resulting derived work is distributed under the terms of a
11 .\" permission notice identical to this one.
13 .\" Since the Linux kernel and libraries are constantly changing, this
14 .\" manual page may be incorrect or out-of-date. The author(s) assume no
15 .\" responsibility for errors or omissions, or for damages resulting from
16 .\" the use of the information contained herein. The author(s) may not
17 .\" have taken the same level of care in the production of this manual,
18 .\" which is licensed free of charge, as they might when working
21 .\" Formatted or processed versions of this manual, if unaccompanied by
22 .\" the source, must acknowledge the copyright and authors of this work.
25 .\" References consulted:
26 .\" Linux libc source code
27 .\" Lewine's _POSIX Programmer's Guide_ (O'Reilly & Associates, 1991)
29 .\" Modified Sun Jul 25 11:01:58 1993 by Rik Faith (faith@cs.unc.edu)
30 .\" Modified 2001-11-13, aeb
31 .\" Modified 2004-12-01 mtk and Martin Schulze <joey@infodrom.org>
33 .TH TZSET 3 2016-03-15 "" "Linux Programmer's Manual"
35 tzset, tzname, timezone, daylight \- initialize time conversion information
42 .BI "extern char *" tzname [2];
43 .BI "extern long " timezone ;
44 .BI "extern int " daylight ;
48 Feature Test Macro Requirements for glibc (see
49 .BR feature_test_macros (7)):
61 || /* Glibc since 2.19: */ _DEFAULT_SOURCE
62 || /* Glibc versions <= 2.19: */ _SVID_SOURCE
66 function initializes the \fItzname\fP variable from the
69 This function is automatically called by the
70 other time conversion functions that depend on the timezone.
71 In a System-V-like environment, it will also set the variables \fItimezone\fP
72 (seconds West of UTC) and \fIdaylight\fP (to 0 if this timezone does not
73 have any daylight saving time rules, or to nonzero if there is a time,
74 past, present or future when daylight saving time applies).
78 variable does not appear in the environment, the system timezone is used.
79 The system timezone is configured by copying, or linking, a file in the
80 .BR tzfile "(5) format to"
82 A timezone database of these files may be located in the system
83 timezone directory (see the \fBFILES\fP section below).
87 variable does appear in the environment, but its value is empty,
88 or its value cannot be interpreted using any of the formats specified
89 below, then Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) is used.
93 can be one of two formats.
94 The first format is a string of characters that directly represent the
98 .IR "std offset" [ dst [ offset ][, start [ /time ], end [ /time ]]]
101 There are no spaces in the specification.
102 The \fIstd\fP string specifies an abbreviation for the timezone and must be
103 three or more alphabetic characters.
104 When enclosed between the less-than (<) and greater-than (>) signs, the
105 characters set is expanded to include the plus (+) sign, the minus (-)
107 The \fIoffset\fP string immediately
108 follows \fIstd\fP and specifies the time value to be added to the local
109 time to get Coordinated Universal Time (UTC).
110 The \fIoffset\fP is positive
111 if the local timezone is west of the Prime Meridian and negative if it is
113 The hour must be between 0 and 24, and the minutes and seconds 00 and 59:
116 .RI [ + | - ] hh [ :mm [ :ss ]]
119 The \fIdst\fP string and \fIoffset\fP specify the name and offset for the
120 corresponding daylight saving timezone.
121 If the offset is omitted,
122 it defaults to one hour ahead of standard time.
124 The \fIstart\fP field specifies when daylight saving time goes into
125 effect and the \fIend\fP field specifies when the change is made back to
127 These fields may have the following formats:
130 This specifies the Julian day with \fIn\fP between 1 and 365.
131 Leap days are not counted.
132 In this format, February 29 can't be represented;
133 February 28 is day 59, and March 1 is always day 60.
136 This specifies the zero-based Julian day with \fIn\fP between 0 and 365.
137 February 29 is counted in leap years.
139 M\fIm\fP.\fIw\fP.\fId\fP
140 This specifies day \fId\fP (0 <= \fId\fP <= 6) of week \fIw\fP
141 (1 <= \fIw\fP <= 5) of month \fIm\fP (1 <= \fIm\fP <= 12).
143 the first week in which day \fId\fP occurs and week 5 is the last week
144 in which day \fId\fP occurs.
147 The \fItime\fP fields specify when, in the local time currently in effect,
148 the change to the other time occurs.
149 If omitted, the default is 02:00:00.
151 Here is an example for New Zealand,
152 where the standard time (NZST) is 12 hours ahead of UTC,
153 and daylight saving time (NZDT), 13 hours ahead of UTC,
154 runs from the first Sunday in October to the third Sunday in March,
155 and the changeovers happen at the default time of 02:00:00:
158 TZ="NZST-12:00:00NZDT-13:00:00,M10.1.0,M3.3.0"
161 The second format specifies that the timezone information should be read
168 If the file specification \fIfilespec\fP is omitted, or its value cannot
169 be interpreted, then Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) is used.
170 If \fIfilespec\fP is given, it specifies another
171 .BR tzfile (5)-format
172 file to read the timezone information from.
173 If \fIfilespec\fP does not begin with a \(aq/\(aq, the file specification is
174 relative to the system timezone directory.
175 If the colon is omitted each
176 of the above \fBTZ\fP formats will be tried.
178 Here's an example, once more for New Zealand:
181 TZ=":Pacific/Auckland"
186 If this variable is set its value takes precedence over the system
190 If this variable is set its value takes precedence over the system
191 configured timezone database directory path.
195 The system timezone file.
197 .I /usr/share/zoneinfo/
198 The system timezone database directory.
200 .I /usr/share/zoneinfo/posixrules
201 When a TZ string includes a dst timezone without anything following it,
202 then this file is used for the start/end rules.
204 .BR tzfile "(5) format."
205 By default, the zoneinfo Makefile hard links it to the
206 .IR America/New_York " tzfile."
208 Above are the current standard file locations, but they are
209 configurable when glibc is compiled.
211 For an explanation of the terms used in this section, see
217 Interface Attribute Value
220 T} Thread safety MT-Safe env locale
223 POSIX.1-2001, POSIX.1-2008, SVr4, 4.3BSD.
226 4.3BSD had a function
227 .BI "char *timezone(" zone ", " dst )
229 name of the timezone corresponding to its first argument (minutes
231 If the second argument was 0, the standard name was used,
232 otherwise the daylight saving time version.
235 .BR gettimeofday (2),