Q68383: TZ and tzset Only Use Whole Hours: How to Work Around

Article: Q68383
Product(s): See article
Version(s): 5.10 6.00 6.00a | 5.10 6.00 6.00a
Operating System(s): MS-DOS | OS/2
Keyword(s): ENDUSER | s_quickc | mspl13_c
Last Modified: 6-FEB-1991

Question:

In looking through the documentation for the TZ environment variable
and the tzset() function, it appears that only whole hours can be used
for time-zone adjustments. I want to calculate the time in SriLanka,
which is 330 minutes off of GMT. How should I do that?

Response:

It is true that the TZ environment variable allows only whole numbers.
This may change in a future release of the run-time libraries when we
support the POSIX implementation (which would allow for partial
hours). In the meantime, the only workaround is to use a second
environment variable (for example, TZ2) as an indicator so you can add
the thirty minutes to the times returned by, and passed to, functions
that return and use local times.

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