os.stat and time zones

[Nagy László Zsolt]

This might be a silly question. Documentation of os.stat:

The exact meaning and resolution of the st_atime, st_mtime, and
st_ctime attributes depend on the operating system and the file
system. For example, on Windows systems using the FAT or FAT32 file
systems, st_mtime has 2-second resolution, and st_atime has only 1-day
resolution. See your operating system documentation for details.

So it says that the meaning is platform dependent.

But here is something interesting. Supposedly, os.stat(fpath).st_mtime
and os.path.getmtime(path) return the same thing. The documentation of
os.path.getmtime says that it "returns the number of seconds since the
epoch". And the time module says that "To find out what the epoch is,
look at gmtime(0)". And the documentation of gmtime says that it
converts the given value to a struct_time *that is in UTC*.

If the above are true, then as far as I can see, the meaning of st_mtime
is NOT platform dependent. It always means the number of seconds elapsed
since the epoch in UTC. (The resolution can be platform dependent, I
admit that.)

So what is the truth? What other difference can be in the meaning that
is platform dependent?