A time zone item specifies an international time zone, indicated
by a small set of letters, e.g., ‘UTC’ or ‘Z’
for Coordinated Universal
Time. Any included periods are ignored. By following a
non-daylight-saving time zone by the string ‘DST’ in a separate
word (that is, separated by some white space), the corresponding
daylight saving time zone may be specified.
Alternatively, a non-daylight-saving time zone can be followed by a
time zone correction, to add the two values. This is normally done
only for ‘UTC’; for example, ‘UTC+05:30’ is equivalent to
‘+05:30’.
Time zone items other than ‘UTC’ and ‘Z’
are obsolescent and are not recommended, because they
are ambiguous; for example, ‘EST’ has a different meaning in
Australia than in the United States. Instead, it's better to use
unambiguous numeric time zone corrections like ‘-0500’, as
described in the previous section.
If neither a time zone item nor a time zone correction is supplied,
time stamps are interpreted using the rules of the default time zone
(see Specifying time zone rules).
Published under the terms of the GNU General Public License
