On Wed, May 16, 2012 at 12:44 AM, SethP <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi all, > > Before I raised this as an issue on Node, I wanted to sanity-check it here. > Basically, I'm having an issue where the Date constructor/localizer lags > behind a change to process.env.TZ. Here's a script to reproduce what I'm > seeing: > > var assert = require('assert'); > > // if either of these three lines is commented out, the problem goes away > process.env.TZ = 'America/Los_Angeles'; > console.log(new Date().toString()); > process.env.TZ = "America/New_York"; > > // uncomment this and the problem goes away > //console.log(new Date().toString()); > > // create a date by parsing a string > var d = new Date('2012-1-12 02:00 PM'); > > // can also create the date this way > //var d = new Date(2012, 0, 12, 14); > > // print the date value and locale string > console.log(d.getTime() + " " + d.toLocaleString()); > > // should create an identical date > var copy = new Date(d); > > // print the copy's value and locale string > // the values are the same, but the **strings are different** > console.log(copy.getTime() + " " + copy.toLocaleString()); > > // here we see the date has been given the wrong value to begin with > assert.equal(d.getTime(), 1326394800000); > > > Hopefully this makes the problem clear - the script prints two dates with > identical ms values but differing toString() values. Admittedly, it seems > harsh to be jerking the TZ around like this, but I suspect there's a bug > here.
It's not really a bug but a result of how the standard timezone functions work on UNIX systems. The date handling code in V8 implicitly calls tzset(3)[1] when you first convert a string to a date or vice versa. tzset() parses and caches the TZ environment variable. That means that you can set TZ just once, further changes won't get picked up. Even that may not work if Node's boot scripts did some date munging - which they almost never do, fortunately. [1] http://linux.die.net/man/3/tzset -- Job Board: http://jobs.nodejs.org/ Posting guidelines: https://github.com/joyent/node/wiki/Mailing-List-Posting-Guidelines You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "nodejs" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/nodejs?hl=en?hl=en
