Time.new(2001, 12, 3).to_i returns wrong value

I am doing something that not many do, I am writing a database driver
for our database, and an active record adapter.

I am having difficulty with Date and Time. Namely, the Ruby doc clearly
states that it represents times internally in UTC seconds since the
common epoch. However, if you look at the Ruby C code clearly this is
not the case, or at least, all operations are performed relative to the
default timezone. For instance:

Time.new(2001, 12, 3).to_i

According to international standards this OUGHT to return 1007337600,
but no, it returns 1007355600, despite the Ruby documentation stating
that the to_i method is supposed to return seconds since the Epoch. What
was left purposefully vague in the doc was that it returns the seconds
since the Epoch RELATIVE TO the timezone. Very strange!!! So I have to
resort to secondary calculations to account for this behavior in Ruby:

true_seconds = time.to_i + time.utc_offset

Comments, questions?

Now here is the sticking point... On the return path FROM the database
when given the good and proper time of 1007337600, how do we convert
back to a Time properly? Note that Time.at adjusts for timezone, so all
values will be off by the timezone offset. I could daisy chain the
construction of multiple Time objects to coerce the values properly, but
it should be simpler than that.

Thoughts?

-- 
Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.