From: Brian Candler <b.candler@...>
Date: 2010-08-21T04:54:02+09:00
Subject: Re: Dealing with dates & timezones

Stuart Clarke wrote:
> Hey all,
> 
> I was wondering if I could ask for some advice regarding dates. I have a
> file that contains lots of date values formatted like so:
> 
> Sunday, 15 August 2010 05:46:50 o'clock BST

Just sub out the "o'clock" and you should be fine.

>> require 'time'
=> true
>> t = Time.parse("Sunday, 15 August 2010 05:46:50 BST")
=> Sun Aug 15 05:46:50 +0100 2010
>> t.gmtime
=> Sun Aug 15 04:46:50 UTC 2010
>> t.localtime
=> Sun Aug 15 05:46:50 +0100 2010
>> t.zone
=> "BST"

Note that t stores the universal (UTC/GMT) time, but remembers the local 
zone is BST; from that you can format and print either.

Internally they are both represented as in UTC as the number of seconds 
from midnight on Jan 1, 1970.

>> t.to_i
=> 1281847610
>> t.gmtime.to_i
=> 1281847610
>> t.localtime.to_i
=> 1281847610
>> t.gmtoff
=> 3600

> I want basically out these dates as follows, applying the necessary time
> zone bias:
> 
> 15/08/2010 06:46:50 (because it is BST we add the hour)

I think you have made a mistake there.

If the time is 05:46:50 BST, as the original string said, then that's 
the time in BST.

Since BST is GMT+1 (in the summer anyway), then the time is also 
04:46:50 in GMT.

It is 06:46:50 local time in France (Western European Time, GMT+2 in 
summer)

HTH,

Brian.
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