date command shows time 20 minutes into future

[Cliff Hones]

On 27/01/2012 12:48, Corinna Vinschen wrote:
> On Jan 27 10:50, David Balažic wrote:
>> Hi!
>>
>> I'm running an up to date version of cygwin (update a week ago or so)
>> on Windows XP Pro SP3.
>>
>> Today I noticed the date command prints the wrong time:
>>  - actual wall clock time: 10:47
>>  - date output: Fri Jan 27 11:07:38 CEST 2012
>>  - date -u: Fri Jan 27 10:08:01 UTC 2012
>>  - windows system time (as in systray) : 10:48
>>
>> Any clue?
> 
> I don't know where you get the CEST from, but other than that the time
> problem should be at least partially solved in the snapshots.  The
> difference from system time shouldn't become more than 40 ms.

I think the CEST comes from Windows. If you don't have TZ set,
I think Cygwin turns the timezone names Windows provides into
abbreviated names by taking the leading letters.

So Windows "Central European Standard Time" => CEST
and "Central European Daylight Time" => CEDT

I've never liked this - arguably Windows is wrong to use non-standard
naming for the timezones.  It's even worse for us in the UK - we get
GMTST and GMTDT - ugh.  [UK may be a little unusual, but perfectly
reasonable in using GMT and BST.]

You can see the Windows names in registry entry
  HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Time Zones

-- Cliff



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