datetime module and timezone

[Olive]

In the datetime module, it has support for a notion of timezone but is
it possible to use one of the available timezone (I am on Linux). Linux
has a notion of timezone (in my distribution, they are stored
in /usr/share/zoneinfo). I would like to be able 1) to know the current
timezone and 2) to be able to use the timezone available on the system.
How can I do that?

Olive

 

[John Gordon]

In the datetime module, it has support for a notion of timezone but is
it possible to use one of the available timezone (I am on Linux). Linux
has a notion of timezone (in my distribution, they are stored
in /usr/share/zoneinfo). I would like to be able 1) to know the current
timezone and 2) to be able to use the timezone available on the system.
How can I do that?

I believe the current user's timezone is stored in the TZ environment
variable.

I don't understand your second question. Are you asking for a list of
of all the possible timezone choices?

 

[Chris Rebert]

In the datetime module, it has support for a notion of timezone but is
it possible to use one of the available timezone (I am on Linux). Linux
has a notion of timezone (in my distribution, they are stored
in /usr/share/zoneinfo). I would like to be able 1) to know the current
timezone

time.tzname gives the zone names (plural due to DST); time.timezone
and time.altzone gives their UTC offsets.

and 2) to be able to use the timezone available on the system.

You can use the name to look it up in pytz (http://pypi.python.org/pypi/pytz/ ).
And python-dateutil (http://labix.org/python-dateutil ) can apparently
parse zoneinfo files, if that's what you mean.

Cheers,
Chris

 

[Bob Martin]

In the datetime module, it has support for a notion of timezone but is
it possible to use one of the available timezone (I am on Linux). Linux
has a notion of timezone (in my distribution, they are stored
in /usr/share/zoneinfo). I would like to be able 1) to know the current
timezone and 2) to be able to use the timezone available on the system.
How can I do that?

For 1) just type "date" on the command line.

 

[all mail refused]

For 1) just type "date" on the command line.

But "date" gets it from somewhere else (otherwise infinite loop).
If there's no environment variable it seems to use files like these.
open("/usr/lib/locale/en_GB.utf8/LC_TIME", O_RDONLY) = 3
...
open("/etc/localtime", O_RDONLY) = 3