Timezone

[Alex Martelli]

"Choppy" <Choppy_member at newsranger.com> wrote in message
news:3CHy6.1580$jz.135481 at www.newsranger.com...
> I was wondering whether anyone knew if it's possible to change the
timezone in a
> Python script.  The reason I ask is because my script is required to read
dates
> with their associated timezones and transform them into GMT.  Python has a
> funtion called gmtime() in their time module however it only transforms
the time
> based on the current local timezone.  I solved this issue with C++ by
setting an
> environment variable "TZ" to the appropriate timezone and running the
_tzset()
> standard C library function to reset the current timezone.  I don't see a
way of
> doing this in Python though.  Any help would be appreciated.

I don't see a way to have tzset() re-run in Python, either -- it
appears to be run once when the time module is initialized, and
that's it.

If your date-string is in an ISO 8601 format, such as:
    YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS[+-HH:MM]
(where the part in brackets is the timezone), or if you
can conveniently transform it to such format, then maybe
the mxDateTime module, ISO submodule, ParseDateTimeUTC
factory function, can fill your needs; or similarly, if
your date strings are or can be conveniently put in
ARPA format, the ARPA submodule -- and I quote:
"""
[Day, ]DD Mon YYYY HH:MM[:SS] ZONE

where ZONE can be one of these: MDT, O, EDT, X, Y, CDT,
UT, AST, GMT, PST, Z, V, CST, ADT, I, W, T, U, R, S, P,
Q, N, EST, L, M, MST, K, H, E, F, G, D, PDT, B, C, UTC,
A (the single letter ones being military time zones).

Use of explicit time zone names other than UTC and GMT
is depreciated, though. The better alternative is
providing the offset from UTC being in effect at the
given local time: +-HHMM (this is the offset you have
to subtract from the given time in order to get UTC).
"""
again with the ParseDateTimeUTC factory function.

See http://www.lemburg.com/files/python/mxDateTime.html
for more details, download information, licensing, etc.


Alex