[Tutor] datetime, time zones, and ISO time

[David Perlman]

But this doesn't help, because then you still don't know whether it's  
dst or not.  You then would have to jump through whatever convolutions  
to do that calculation.

All I want to know is the *current* offset between local time and  
utc.  I know the system has this information already; it doesn't  
require any kind of fancy calculations about global politics or  
anything.


On Feb 17, 2010, at 3:12 PM, Kent Johnson wrote:

> On Wed, Feb 17, 2010 at 3:48 PM, David Perlman <dperlman at wisc.edu>  
> wrote:
>> Surely there is a way to simply print out the local time, date and  
>> time zone
>> without needing to write your own class...  I can't believe this is  
>> the only
>> way...
>>
>> Here's why I don't believe it.  Both the datetime and time modules  
>> provide
>> both functions for returning the current local time, and the  
>> current utc
>> time.  So, assuming that those functions are trustworthy, it *must*  
>> be true
>> that the OS always knows the current offset from utc time.  So why  
>> is there
>> no straightforward way to get that offset in python?  I mean, I can  
>> do this:
>
> time.timezone gives the offset for standard time.

--
-dave----------------------------------------------------------------
"Pseudo-colored pictures of a person's brain lighting up are
undoubtedly more persuasive than a pattern of squiggles produced by a
polygraph.  That could be a big problem if the goal is to get to the
truth."  -Dr. Steven Hyman, Harvard