On Fri, 5 Sep 2003, Jesse Keating wrote: >So a file that was created with a timezone setting of EST, then the user >sets the timezone to PST, wouldn't the file have a timestamp 3 hours in >the future, or would the timestamp change to reflect the timezone? It would be displayed as PST/PDT. >Is the TRUE timestamp something different, and what ls et al show us is >the REAL timestamp filtered through a timezone adjustment? For "proper" UNIX filesystems, I believe the date is stored as UTC, but presented in the localtime timezone *at the timestamp of the file*. For example: $ export TZ=Europe/London $ date Fri Sep 5 19:38:14 BST 2003 $ touch file1 $ date -s '12 Nov 2003 12:00:00' Wed Nov 12 12:00:00 GMT 2003 [Note timezone change due to daylight savings] $ touch file2 $ ls -l -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 Sep 5 19:38 file1 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 Nov 12 12:00 file2 $ env TZ=GMT ls -l -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 Sep 5 18:38 file1 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 Nov 12 12:00 file2 Notice how the first "ls -l" has given file1's time in BST, even though the "current" timezone is GMT. If the TZ environment variable is not set, libc looks at /etc/localtime to determine the timezone. Hope this helps, Phil
