Time Zones
CFDate objects are all expressed as Greenwich Mean Time, or GMT. In order to convert a GMT date to your local time you must use a CFTimeZone object. A CFTimeZone represents a geopolitical region that has some temporal offset, either plus or minus, from GMT as well as an abbreviation—such as “PST”. In addition to familiar abbreviations, time zones are also named by country and region. For example the United States spans these times zones:
USA Eastern: -5 hours GMT
USA Indiana East: -5 hours GMT
USA Central: -6 hours GMT
USA Mountain: -7 hours GMT
USA Arizona: -7 hours GMT
USA Pacific: -8 hours GMT
USA Alaska: -9 hours GMT
USA Aleutian: -10 hours GMT
USA Hawaii: -10 hours GMT
To make matters even more complex, any region may or may not be on Daylight Savings Time (DST).
In order to properly convert GMT to local time, you have to
know which time zone you are in and if DST is in effect. Core Foundation
uses time zone names, abbreviations, GMT offset, and DST information
for a particular time zone obtained from a public-domain database
maintained at ftp://elsie.nci.nih.gov//pub/
.
This database contains information representing the history of local
time for many representative locations around the globe. The database
is updated periodically to reflect changes made to GMT offsets and
daylight-saving rules by political entities.
For examples of how to use CFDate and CFTimeZone, see the Using Dates.
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