Brian Hirt <bhirt at me.com> writes:
> If it's known that slon has problems with time zones with daylight
> savings time, wouldn't it make sense to default it to UTC or at least
> give you a warning when it starts up?  I had no idea about this and I
> could see others being bit in the rump by this as well.  I've set up
> my scripts to use TZ=UTC now instead of the machines local time zone
> and have restarted them, but now I wonder what would have happened if
> I didn't read this thread?

Ooh, splendid idea!

Bug #156 does "health check" stuff at startup time.

Adding a timezone check which warns if you start up with an
unstable/discontinuous timezone seems like a nice thing to add.

> That being said wouldn't it make more sense, like the OP is saying, to
> use timestamp without timezone?  Why give someone a gun to shoot
> themselves in the foot if it can be avoided?

Actually, that's backwards.  We have always used timestamp *without*
timezone, and the proposal is to change to use timestamp *with*
timezone.

There's a small issue that "with timezone" consumes a little more space;
I wouldn't consider that terribly important.

In my view, to use a timezone which has a known incontinuity (e.g. -
where you can expect a 1 hour "leap" every so often) *is* the footgun.
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Christopher Browne
"Bother,"  said Pooh,  "Eeyore, ready  two photon  torpedoes  and lock
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