[Bug 1452314] Re: TZ=EDT date reporting misleading times

Mon Mar 29 13:22:52 UTC 2021

I can confirm that this is still the case...
On an ubuntu 20.04:
```
ard at lenny:~$ TZ=US/Eastern date
Mon Mar 29 09:08:43 EDT 2021
ard at lenny:~$ TZ=America/New_York date
Mon Mar 29 09:08:47 EDT 2021
ard at lenny:~$ TZ=EDT date
Mon Mar 29 13:08:51 EDT 2021
ard at lenny:~$ TZ=EST date
Mon Mar 29 08:16:16 EST 2021
ard at lenny:~$ TZ=NNN date
Mon Mar 29 13:16:26 NNN 2021
ard at lenny:~$ TZ=NNNN date
Mon Mar 29 13:16:31 NNNN 2021
```
on trusty:
```
ard at trusty:~$ TZ=EDT date
Mon Mar 29 13:17:27 EDT 2021
ard at trusty:~$ TZ=US/Eastern date
Mon Mar 29 09:17:38 EDT 2021
ard at trusty:~$ TZ=EST date
Mon Mar 29 08:17:45 EST 2021
ard at trusty:~$ TZ=NNNN date
Mon Mar 29 13:17:51 NNNN 2021
ard at trusty:~$ TZ=America/New_York date
Mon Mar 29 09:18:27 EDT 2021
ard at trusty:~$ TZ=xxx date
Mon Mar 29 13:18:46 xxx 2021
ard at trusty:~$ TZ=xxxxxxx date
Mon Mar 29 13:18:50 xxxxxxx 2021
ard at trusty:~$ TZ=CET date
Mon Mar 29 15:19:30 CEST 2021
ard at trusty:~$ TZ=CEST date
Mon Mar 29 13:19:34 CEST 2021
ard at trusty:~$ TZ=UTC date
Mon Mar 29 13:21:31 UTC 2021

```

So timezone setting using the name EDT are broken. The only way to get EDT is to use US/Eastern or America/New_York .
Personally I think it's a bug to not accept EDT (might be ambiguous), and an even bigger bug to just echo the TZ if the TZ is actually unknown.

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1452314

Title:
  TZ=EDT date reporting misleading times

Status in coreutils package in Ubuntu:
  New

Bug description:
  While working in a UTC system I stumbled upon some oddities with the
  date command, that at least appear to differ from how BSD systems
  report (correctly) when EDT or gibberish is passed to date via the TZ
  env variable.

  Currently I am in EST timezone, which during daylight savings time, is
  EDT. If I run date with "TZ=", I get changes in timezones used by date
  as expected, but noticed that EDT was actually returning UTC time, but
  displays "EDT" (so 10am becomes 2pm) despite actually displaying UTC.

  As a test, I also tried supply a bunch of gibberish only to find that
  BSD actually replaces the gibberish with the text "UTC", while linux
  systems just spit back the same gibberish (ie: TZ=jhsdjflhljak date),
  but report it in UTC time. So in the case where a user supplies a
  valid timezone such as EDT, one can make time related mistakes as
  linux will actually report UTC but use the label the user supplied.
  What is worse, is that Ubuntu actually shows my current time zone as
  "EDT" yet it isn't recognized as a valid zone!

  Here are some same outputs to clarify the problem on linux and bsd:

  Freebsd:
  [dan at barley ~]$ TZ=UTC date 
  Wed May  6 15:09:26 UTC 2015
  [dan at barley ~]$ TZ=EST date
  Wed May  6 10:09:32 EST 2015
  [dan at barley ~]$ TZ=EDT date
  Wed May  6 15:09:39 UTC 2015
  [dan at barley ~]$ TZ=lkjhsd date
  Wed May  6 15:11:16 UTC 2015   <==== good, correctly informs me what its reporting

  Ubuntu 14.04:
  dan at wks:~$ TZ=UTC date
  Wed May  6 15:10:48 UTC 2015
  dan at wks:~$ TZ=EST date
  Wed May  6 10:10:48 EST 2015
  dan at wks:~$ TZ=EDT date
  Wed May  6 15:10:48 EDT 2015   <==== EDT = UTC?!
  dan at wks:~$ date
  Wed May  6 11:10:56 EDT 2015   <==== the real EDT time
  dan at wks:~$ TZ=lkjhsd date
  Wed May  6 15:11:30 lkjhsd 2015  <===== wth?

  ProblemType: Bug
  DistroRelease: Ubuntu 14.04
  Package: coreutils 8.21-1ubuntu5.1
  ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.13.0-46.79-generic 3.13.11-ckt15
  Uname: Linux 3.13.0-46-generic x86_64
  NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia
  ApportVersion: 2.14.1-0ubuntu3.10
  Architecture: amd64
  CurrentDesktop: XFCE
  Date: Wed May  6 11:01:37 2015
  InstallationDate: Installed on 2014-06-11 (329 days ago)
  InstallationMedia: Xubuntu 14.04 LTS "Trusty Tahr" - Release amd64 (20140416.2)
  SourcePackage: coreutils
  UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)

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