Hi, the national recommendations in Finland for Finnish concerning date strings containing timezone state that they should use format like "UTC+3" or "UTC+5.30" [1]. strftime's %z prints something like "+0300" but this clearly does not match the recommendations. With GNU date the closest output one can get is "UTC+03" by using the "UTC%:::z" format string which is much closer (but still not quite as recommended).
I've filed a RFE about glibc's strftime at http://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=12747 in order to be able to update the Finnish locale according to the recommendations. In the BZ it was suggested to talk to Austin Group first about standardizing such a modifier. I gather that an existing implementation or practice would make such an attempt more likely to succeed. Given that GNU date's "UTC%:::z" produces almost what we're looking for full hours ("UTC+03" vs "UTC+3") I'm wondering would it be possible to add support for GNU date to express timezone in a way to match the aforementioned recommendations? This might hopefully help in possible future discussions with Austin Group which, if leading to positive results, could then in turn used as basis for glibc strftime changes which would then, finally, allow changing the Finnish locale as described above. Naturally, if you have alternative ideas how to achieve what I'm looking for I'd be more than happy to hear your suggestions. 1) http://kotoistus.fi/suositukset/vahv_kalenterit_cldr1_4.htm#Kellonajat Thanks, -- Marko Myllynen
