<?xml version="1.0" encoding="US-ASCII"?> <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en"> <head> <title>Sources for Time Zone and Daylight Saving Time Data</title> <link rel="schema.DC" href="http://purl.org/DC/elements/1.1/" /> <meta http-equiv="Content-type" content='text/html; charset="US-ASCII"' /> <meta name="DC.Creator" content="Eggert, Paul" /> <meta name="DC.Contributor" content="Olson, Arthur David" /> <meta name="DC.Date" content="2004-05-24" /> <meta name="DC.Description" content="Sources of information about time zones and daylight saving time" /> <meta name="DC.Identifier" content="http://www.twinsun.com/tz/tz-link.htm" /> <meta name="Keywords" content="database,daylight saving,DST,time zone,timezone,tz,zoneinfo" /> </head> <body> <h1>Sources for Time Zone and Daylight Saving Time Data</h1> <address> @(#)tz-link.htm 7.42 </address> <p> Please send corrections to this web page to the <a href="mailto:tz@elsie.nci.nih.gov">time zone mailing list</a>. </p> <h2>The <code>tz</code> database</h2> <p> The public-domain time zone database contains code and data that represent the history of local time for many representative locations around the globe. It is updated periodically to reflect changes made by political bodies to UTC offsets and daylight-saving rules. This database (often called <code>tz</code> or <code>zoneinfo</code>) is used by several implementations, including <a href="http://www.gnu.org/software/libc/">the GNU C Library</a> used in <a href="http://www.linux.org/">GNU/Linux</a>, <a href="http://www.freebsd.org/">FreeBSD</a>, <a href="http://www.netbsd.org/">NetBSD</a>, <a href="http://www.openbsd.org/">OpenBSD</a>, <a href="http://www.cygwin.com/">Cygwin</a>, <a href="http://www.delorie.com/djgpp/">DJGPP</a>, <a href="http://www.hp.com/products1/unix/operating/">HP-UX</a>, <a href="http://www.sgi.com/developers/technology/irix/">IRIX</a>, <a href="http://www.apple.com/macosx/">Mac OS X</a>, <a href="http://h71000.www7.hp.com/">OpenVMS</a>, <a href="http://wwws.sun.com/software/solaris/">Solaris</a>, <a href="http://www.tru64unix.compaq.com/">Tru64</a>, and <a href="http://www.sco.com/products/unixware/">UnixWare</a>.</p> <p> Each location in the database represents a national region where all clocks keeping local time have agreed since 1970. Locations are identified by continent or ocean and then by the name of the location, which is typically the largest city within the region. For example, <code>America/New_York</code> represents most of the US eastern time zone; <code>America/Indianapolis</code> represents most of Indiana, which uses eastern time without daylight saving time (DST); <code>America/Detroit</code> represents most of Michigan, which uses eastern time but with different DST rules in 1975; and other entries represent smaller regions like Starke County, Kentucky, which switched from central to eastern time in 1991. To use the database, set the <code>TZ</code> environment variable to the location's full name, e.g., <code>TZ="America/New_York"</code>.</p> <p> In the <code>tz</code> database's <a href="ftp://elsie.nci.nih.gov/pub/">FTP distribution</a>, the code is in the file <code>tzcode<var>C</var>.tar.gz</code>, where <code><var>C</var></code> is the code's version; similarly, the data are in <code>tzdata<var>D</var>.tar.gz</code>, where <code><var>D</var></code> is the data's version. The following shell commands download these files to a GNU/Linux or similar host; see the downloaded <code>README</code> file for what to do next.</p> <pre style="margin-left: 2em"><code><a href="http://www.gnu.org/software/wget/">wget</a> 'ftp://elsie.nci.nih.gov/pub/tz*.tar.gz' <a href="http://www.gnu.org/software/gzip/">gzip</a> -dc tzcode*.tar.gz | <a href="http://www.gnu.org/software/tar/">tar</a> -xf - gzip -dc tzdata*.tar.gz | tar -xf - </code></pre> <p> The code lets you compile the <code>tz</code> source files into machine-readable binary files, one for each location. It also lets you read a <code>tz</code> binary file and interpret time stamps for that location.</p> <p> The data are by no means authoritative. If you find errors, please send changes to the <a href="mailto:tz@elsie.nci.nih.gov">time zone mailing list</a>. You can also <a href="mailto:tz-request@elsie.nci.nih.gov">subscribe</a> to the mailing list, retrieve the <a href="ftp://elsie.nci.nih.gov/pub/tzarchive.gz">archive of old messages</a> (in gzip compressed format), or retrieve <a href="ftp://munnari.oz.au/pub/oldtz/">archived older versions of code and data</a>.</p> <p> The Web has several other sources for time zone and daylight saving time data. Here are some recent links that may be of interest. </p> <h2>Web pages using recent versions of the <code>tz</code> database</h2> <ul> <li><a href="http://twiki.org/cgi-bin/xtra/tzdate">Date and Time Gateway</a> is a text-based point-and-click interface to tables of current time throughout the world.</li> <li>Fancier web interfaces, roughly in ascending order of complexity, include: <ul> <li><a href="http://www.hilink.com.au/times/">Local Times Around the World</a></li> <li><a href="http://www.convertit.com/Go/ConvertIt/World_Time/Current_Time.ASP">Current Time in 1000 Places</a></li> <li><a href="http://timezoneconverter.com/">Time Zone Converter</a></li> </ul></li> <li><a href="http://www.holidayfestival.com/">The Worldwide Holiday & Festival Site</a> lists DST-related clock changes along with holidays.</li> <li><a href="http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/">The World Clock - Time Zones</a> is a web interface to a time zone database derived from <code>tz</code>'s.</li> </ul> <h2>Other time zone database formats</h2> <ul> <li>The <a href="ftp://ftp.rfc-editor.org/in-notes/rfc2445.txt"> Internet Calendaring and Scheduling Core Object Specification (iCalendar)</a> specification published by the <a href="http://www.ietf.org/html.charters/calsch-charter.html">IETF Calendaring and Scheduling Working Group (calsch)</a> covers time zone data; see its VTIMEZONE calendar component.</li> <li>The <a href="http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-rdf-calendar/">www-rdf-calendar</a> list discusses <a href="http://www.w3.org/RDF/">RDF</a>-based calendar and group scheduling systems, and has a <a href="http://www.w3.org/2002/12/cal/#tzd">workspace on time zone data</a> converted from <code>tz</code>. An earlier <a href="http://www.w3.org/2000/01/foo">schema</a> was sketched out by <a href="http://www.w3.org/People/Berners-Lee/">Tim Berners-Lee</a>.</li> <li><a href="http://www.calsch.org/ietf/archives/draft-ietf-calsch-many-xcal-02.txt">XCal</a> was a draft <a href="http://www.w3.org/XML/">XML</a> document type definition that corresponded to iCalendar.</li> </ul> <h2>Other <code>tz</code> compilers</h2> <ul> <li><a href="http://www.dachaplin.dsl.pipex.com/vzic">Vzic iCalendar Timezone Converter</a> describes a program Vzic that compiles <code>tz</code> source into iCalendar-compatible VTIMEZONE files. Vzic is freely available under the <a href="http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html">GNU General Public License (GPL)</a>.</li> <li><a href="http://search.cpan.org/dist/DateTime-TimeZone/">DateTime::TimeZone</a> contains a script <code>parse_olson</code> that compiles <code>tz</code> source into <a href="http://www.perl.org/">Perl</a> modules. It is part of the Perl <a href="http://datetime.perl.org/">DateTime Project</a>, which is freely available under both the GPL and the Perl <a href="http://www.perl.com/language/misc/Artistic.html">Artistic License</a>. DateTime::TimeZone also contains a script <code>tests_from_zdump</code> that generates test cases for each clock transition in the <code>tz</code> database.</li> <li><a href="http://oss.software.ibm.com/icu/">International Components for Unicode (ICU)</a> contains a C/C++ library for internationalization that has a compiler from <samp>tz</samp> source into an ICU-specific format. ICU is freely available under a BSD-style license.</li> <li><a href="http://joda-time.sourceforge.net/">Joda Time - Java date and time API</a> contains a class <code>org.joda.time.tz.ZoneInfoCompiler</code> that compiles <code>tz</code> source into a Joda-specific binary format. Joda Time is freely available under a BSD-style license.</li> </ul> <h2>Other <code>tz</code> binary file readers</h2> <ul> <li>The <a href="http://www.gnu.org/software/libc/">GNU C Library</a> has an independent, thread-safe implementation of a <code>tz</code> binary file reader. This library is freely available under the <a href="http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/lesser.html"> GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL)</a>, and is widely used in GNU/Linux systems.</li> <li><a href="http://www.bmsi.com/java/#TZ">ZoneInfo.java</a> is a <code>tz</code> binary file reader written in Java. It is freely available under the GNU LGPL.</li> <li><a href="http://s.keim.free.fr/tz/doc.html">Python time zones</a> is a <code>tz</code> binary file reader written in <a href="http://www.python.org/">Python</a>. It is freely available under a BSD-style license.</li> </ul> <h2>Other <code>tz</code>-based time zone conversion software</h2> <ul> <li><a href="http://java.sun.com/">Sun Java</a> releases since 1.4 contain a copy of a recent <samp>tz</samp> database in a Java-specific format.</li> <li><a href="http://www1.tip.nl/~t876506/AboutTimeZonesHC.html">HyperCard time zones calculator</a> is a HyperCard stack.</li> <li><a href="http://www.cimmyt.org/timezone/">World Time Explorer</a> is a Microsoft Windows program.</li> </ul> <h2>Other time zone databases</h2> <ul> <li><a href="http://www.astro.com/cgi-bin/atlw3/aq.cgi?lang=e">Atlas Query - Astrodienst</a> is Astrodienst's Web version of Shanks's excellent time zone history atlases published in both <a href="http://astrocom.com/software/pcatlas.php">computer</a> and <a href="http://astrocom.com/books/xrefa.php#SHANKS">book</a> form by <a href="http://astrocom.com/">Astro Communications Services</a>.</li> <li><a href="http://worldtime.com/">WORLDTIME: interactive atlas, time info, public holidays</a> contains information on local time, sunrise and sunset, and public holidays in several hundred cities around the world.</li> <li><a href="http://www.worldtimeserver.com/">World Time Server</a> is another time zone database.</li> <li><a href="http://tycho.usno.navy.mil/tzones.html">World Time Zones</a> contains data from the Time Service Department of the US Naval Observatory (USNO), used as the source for the <code>usno*</code> files in the <code>tz</code> distribution.</li> <li><a href="http://www.airportcitycodes.com/aaa/">Airlines, Airplanes and Airports</a> lists current standard times for thousands of airports around the world. This seems to be derived from the <a href="http://www.iata.org/sked/publications/">Standard Schedules Information Manual (SSIM)</a> of the the <a href="http://www.iata.org/">International Air Transport Association</a>, which gives current time zone rules for all the airports served by commercial aviation.</li> </ul> <h2>Maps</h2> <ul> <li>The <a href="http://www.odci.gov/">United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)</a> publishes a <a href="http://www.odci.gov/cia/publications/factbook/reference_maps/pdf/time_zones.pdf">time zone map</a>; the <a href="http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/world.html">Perry-Castañeda Library Map Collection</a> of the University of Texas at Austin has copies of recent editions. The pictorial quality is good, but the maps do not indicate summer time, and parts of the data are a few years out of date.</li> <li><a href="http://worldtimezone.com/">World timezones map with current time</a> has several fancy time zone maps; it covers Russia particularly well. The maps' pictorial quality is not quite as good as the CIA's but the maps are more up to date.</li> </ul> <h2>Time zone boundaries</h2> <ul> <li><a href="http://home-4.tiscali.nl/~t876506/Multizones.html">Time zone boundaries for multizone countries</a> summarizes legal boundaries between time zones within countries.</li> <li>Manifold.net's <a href="http://www.manifold.net/download/freemaps.html">Free Maps and GIS Data</a> includes a Manifold-format map of world time zone boundaries distributed under the GPL. The GeoCommunity's <a href="http://software.geocomm.com/data/intl_timezones.html">International Time Zones</a> publishes the same data in other formats.</li> <li>The US Geological Survey's National Atlas of the United States publishes the <a href="http://www.nationalatlas.gov/timeznm.html">Time Zones of the United States</a> in the public domain.</li> <li>The GeoCommunity lists several commercial sources for <a href="http://spatialnews.geocomm.com/features/timezones/">International Time Zones and Time Zone Data</a>.</li> </ul> <h2>Civil time concepts and history</h2> <ul> <li><a href="http://physics.nist.gov/time">A Walk through Time</a> surveys the evolution of timekeeping.</li> <li><a href="http://webexhibits.org/daylightsaving/">About Daylight Saving Time - History, rationale, laws and dates</a> is an overall history of DST.</li> <li><a href="http://toi.iriti.cnr.it/">The Time of Internet</a> describes time zones and daylight saving time, with diagrams. The time zone map is out of date, however.</li> <li><a href="http://www.phys.uu.nl/~vgent/idl/idl.htm">A History of the International Date Line</a> tells the story of the most important time zone boundary.</li> <li><a href="http://www.statoids.com/tconcept.html">Basic Time Zone Concepts</a> discusses terminological issues behind time zones.</li> </ul> <h2>National histories of legal time</h2> <dl> <dt>Australia</dt> <dd>The Community Relations Division of the New South Wales (NSW) Attorney General's Department maintains a <a href="http://www.lawlink.nsw.gov.au/crd.nsf/pages/time2">history of daylight saving in NSW</a>.</dd> <dt>Austria</dt> <dd>The Federal Office of Metrology and Surveying publishes a table of <a href="http://www.metrologie.at/pdf/sommerzeit.pdf" hreflang="de">daylight saving time in Austria (in German)</a>.</dd> <dt>Belgium</dt> <dd>The Royal Observatory of Belgium maintains a table of <a href="http://www.astro.oma.be/GENERAL/INFO/nli001a.html" hreflang="nl">time in Belgium (in Dutch)</a>.</dd> <dt>Brazil</dt> <dd>The Time Service Department of the National Observatory records <a href="http://pcdsh01.on.br/DecHV.html" hreflang="pt-BR">Brazil's daylight saving time decrees (in Portuguese)</a>.</dd> <dt>Canada</dt> <dd>The Institute for National Measurement Standards publishes current and some older information about <a href="http://inms-ienm.nrc-cnrc.gc.ca/time_services/daylight_savings_e.html">Time Zones and Daylight Saving Time</a>.</dd> <dt>Chile</dt> <dd>WebExhibits publishes a <a href="http://webexhibits.org/daylightsaving/chile.html" hreflang="es">history of official time (in Spanish)</a> originally written by the Chilean Hydrographic and Oceanographic Service.</dd> <dt>Germany</dt> <dd>The National Institute for Science and Technology maintains the <a href="http://www.ptb.de/en/org/4/44/441/dars_e.htm">Realisation of Legal Time in Germany</a>.</dd> <dt>Israel</dt> <dd>The Interior Ministry periodically issues <a href="ftp://ftp.cs.huji.ac.il/pub/tz/announcements/" hreflang="he">announcements (in Hebrew)</a>.</dd> <dt>Mexico</dt> <dd>The Investigation and Analysis Service of the Mexican Library of Congress has published a <a href="http://www.cddhcu.gob.mx/bibliot/publica/inveyana/polisoc/horver/" hreflang="es">history of Mexican local time (in Spanish)</a>.</dd> <dt>Malaysia</dt> <dd>See Singapore below.</dd> <dt>Netherlands</dt> <dd><a href="http://www.phys.uu.nl/~vgent/wettijd/wettijd.htm" hreflang="nl">Legal time in the Netherlands (in Dutch)</a> covers the history of local time in the Netherlands from ancient times.</dd> <dt>New Zealand</dt> <dd>The Department of Internal Affairs maintains a brief history <a href="http://www.dia.govt.nz/diawebsite.nsf/wpg_URL/Resource-material-Information-We-Provide-About-Daylight-Saving">about daylight saving</a>. The privately-maintained <a href="http://www.astrologyhouse.co.nz/timechanges.htm">Time Changes in New Zealand</a> has more details.</dd> <dt>Singapore</dt> <dd><a href="http://www.math.nus.edu.sg/aslaksen/teaching/timezone.html">Why is Singapore in the "Wrong" Time Zone?</a> details the history of legal time in Singapore and Malaysia.</dd> <dt>United Kingdom</dt> <dd><a href="http://www.srcf.ucam.org/~jsm28/british-time/">History of legal time in Britain</a> discusses in detail the country with perhaps the best-documented history of clock adjustments. The National Physical Laboratory also maintains an <a href="http://www.npl.co.uk/time/summer_time_archive.html">archive of summer time dates</a>.</dd> </dl> <h2>Precision timekeeping</h2> <ul> <li><a href="http://literature.agilent.com/litwebbin/purl.cgi?org_id=tmo&pub_id=5965-7984E">The Science of Timekeeping</a> is a thorough introduction to the theory and practice of precision timekeeping.</li> <li><a href="http://www.ntp.org/">NTP: The Network Time Protocol</a> discusses how to synchronize clocks of Internet hosts.</li> <li><a href="http://gauss.gge.unb.ca/GMT.UT.and.the.RGO.txt" charset="macintosh">A Few Facts Concerning GMT, UT, and the RGO</a> answers questions like "What is the difference between GMT and UTC?"</li> <li><a href="http://www.gb.nrao.edu/~rfisher/Ephemerides/times.html">Astronomical Times</a> explains more abstruse astronomical time scales like TT, TCG, and TDB.</li> <li>The <a href="http://www.iau.org/">IAU</a>'s <a href="http://www.iau-sofa.rl.ac.uk/">Standards Of Fundamental Astronomy</a> (SOFA) initiative publishes Fortran code for converting among time scales like TAI, TDB, TT and UTC.</li> <li><a href="http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/basics/bsf2-3.htm">Basics of Space Flight - Reference Systems - Time Conventions</a> briefly explains interplanetary space flight timekeeping.</li> <li><a href="http://www.giss.nasa.gov/tools/mars24/help/notes.html">Technical Notes on Mars Solar Time as Adopted by the Mars24 Sunclock</a> briefly describes Mars Coordinated Time (MTC) and the diverse local time scales used by each landed mission on Mars.</li> <li><a href="http://hpiers.obspm.fr/eop-pc/products/bulletins/bulletins.html">Bulletins maintained by the IERS EOP (PC)</a> contains official publications of the Earth Orientation Parameters Product Center of the International Earth Rotation Service, the committee that decides when leap seconds occur.</li> <li>The <a href="http://www.mail-archive.com/leapsecs@rom.usno.navy.mil/">Leap Second Discussion List</a> covers McCarthy and Klepczynski's proposal to discontinue leap seconds, published in <a href="http://www.gpsworld.com/">GPS World</a> <strong>10</strong>, 11 (1999-11), 50–57 and discussed further in R. A. Nelson et al., <a href="http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/time/metrologia-leapsecond.pdf">The leap second: its history and possible future</a>, <a href="http://www.bipm.fr/metrologia/metrologia.html">Metrologia</a> <strong>38</strong> (2001), 509–529. <a href="http://www.ucolick.org/~sla/leapsecs/onlinebib.html">The Future of Leap Seconds</a> catalogs information about this contentious issue.</li> </ul> <h2>Time notation</h2> <ul> <li> <a href="http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/iso-time.html">A Summary of the International Standard Date and Time Notation</a> is a good summary of ISO 8601:1988 - Data elements and interchange formats - Information interchange - Representation of dates and times (which has been superseded by <a href="http://www.iso.org/iso/en/CatalogueDetailPage.CatalogueDetail?CSNUMBER=26780">ISO 8601:2000</a>).</li> <li> Section 3.3 of <a href="ftp://ftp.rfc-editor.org/in-notes/rfc2822.txt">Internet RFC 2822</a> specifies the time notation used in email and <a href="ftp://ftp.rfc-editor.org/in-notes/rfc2616.txt">HTTP</a> headers.</li> <li> <a href="ftp://ftp.rfc-editor.org/in-notes/rfc3339.txt">Internet RFC 3339</a> specifies an ISO 8601 profile for use in new Internet protocols.</li> <li> <a href="http://www.exit109.com/~ghealton/y2k/yrexamples.html">The Best of Dates, the Worst of Dates</a> covers many problems encountered by software developers when handling dates and time stamps.</li> <li> Alphabetic time zone abbreviations should not be used as unique identifiers for UTC offsets as they are ambiguous in practice. For example, "EST" denotes 5 hours behind UTC in English-speaking North America, but it denotes 10 or 11 hours ahead of UTC in Australia; and French-speaking North Americans prefer "HNE" to "EST". For compatibility with <a href="http://www.pasc.org/#POSIX">POSIX</a> the <code>tz</code> database contains English abbreviations for all time stamps but in many cases these are merely inventions of the database maintainers.</li> </ul> <h2>Related indexes</h2> <ul> <li><a href="tz-art.htm">Time and the Arts</a></li> <li><a href="http://dmoz.org/Reference/Time/">Open Directory - Reference: Time</a></li> <li><a href="http://directory.google.com/Top/Reference/Time/">Google Directory - Reference > Time</a></li> <li><a href="http://dir.yahoo.com/Science/Measurements_and_Units/Time/">Yahoo! Science > Measurements and Units > Time</a></li> </ul> </body> </html>