[egenix-users] Has the gmtoffset return value changed?

[M.-A. Lemburg]

Mike C. Fletcher wrote:
> I have a little module "sunriseset.py" that calculates (strangely 
> enough) sun rise and set times, and which was working fine with older 
> versions of mxDateTime.  However, this morning I received a bug report 
> that it's no longer working.  As far as I know there have been no 
> changes to the module itself, and prior to this (when I checked it many 
> months ago) its self-check passed fine.  That would have been with an 
> earlier mxDateTime release.
> 
> I have, of course, since updated mxDateTime when I updated mxTextTools. 
> The thing is, now the reported values from gmtoffset appear to have been 
> reversed in sign (that is, what was 5h is now -5h). 

-5h is the correct value in your locale (that's also what your
mail client reports as GMT offset):

The UTC offset is defined as: local time - UTC time,
e.g.  it is negative in the US and positive in eastern
Europe and Asia.

> Obviously the sign 
> is always just an arbitrary choice (hence the need to declare which 
> direction increases/decreases in specifications of time systems), but 
> I'm surprised that it would have changed sign between releases of the 
> mxDateTime library.
> 
> Anyway, I can work around this if I know which versions of mxDateTime 
> return positive, and which negative, values  for the same time-zones 
> (i.e. when the switch occurs).  Marc-André, anyone?

I am not aware that there were any changes in the sign. Are you
sure that mxDateTime returned 5h for you in some prior version ?
And if so, which versions are you comparing and on which
platform ?

-- 
Marc-Andre Lemburg
CEO eGenix.com Software GmbH
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