[rorrr2]

Unix timestamps are always UTC (GMT)

Quote:

> Unix time, or POSIX time, is a system for describing instants in time, defined as the number of seconds that have elapsed since 00:00:00 Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), Thursday, 1 January 1970

[colanderman]

More importantly (the GP missed this as well), Unix timestamps can't convey local time. Local time has UI implications, e.g. the query "is this event on a weekend" is not generally answerable without the time zone.

[nly]

For historical dates, I'd rather everyone knew how to convert accurately to and from UTC (2 conversions), rather than relying on everyone to have a bug-free and up to date implementation of 2N(N-1) conversions.

That said, the exception for local time, at least in my opinion, is agreeing on dates in the future meant for human interaction (e.g. "I'll meet you at 7 AM local time in Time Square on the 3rd of April 2068"). Here time zone rules may actually change before the date transpires, and you can't be sure of the representation in any other zone or format until closer to the event.

[DannyBee]

Entirely true, but not necessarily relevant.

Local time is a weird thing and changes all the time.

For giggles, look at the history of timezone rule changes in tzdata.

Most timezones have at least one duplicate hour per year (IE the same time occurs twice) in the US as well.

Local times are not an appropriate way to store time.

Note: ISO8601 does not give you local time anyway, since you cannot infer the timezone from the time offset.

[colanderman]

No, that's exactly my point. Sometimes you want an event to occur at 9 AM EST, regardless of how that translates to UTC.

That you cannot infer the timezone from the time offset in ISO 8601 is a good point though.

[hosay123]

If you've ever moved country, and imported some data from the old country and mixed it with data from your new country, it quickly becomes obvious why preserving source timezone is a deeply useful attribute ("It's a beautifully sunny day! -- me, 04:17hrs").

Or at the very least, preserving the time offset.

[TheZenPsycho]

Uhm, UTC != GMT Nobody in this comments thread knows what they're talking about and I wouldn't trust anyone here to program anything to do with time.

[Tloewald]

As far as I can tell, GMT is now UT1 which may not diverge from UTC by more than one second. I don't think conflating the two is especially egregious in this context.

[andrewaylett]

My experience suggests that's not always the case :(.

[VexXtreme]

This is a standard as well as a convention. People breaking it are idiots. Most software out there assumes UTC time when dealing with Unix timestamps. Most Java date libraries handle this perfectly and get the correct timezone.