Timex Oddity

Questions & Help Questions
1

A colleague spotted an odd thing that neither of us can figure out:

iex(1)> Timex.timezone(“America/Chicago”, {2015,4,12})

#<TimezoneInfo(America/Chicago - CDT (-05:00:00))>

iex(2)> Timex.timezone(“America/Chicago”, {2015,1,12})

#<TimezoneInfo(America/Chicago - CST (-06:00:00))>

I would have expected all calls to timezone in Chicago to be -06:00:00. Is the difference due to Daylight Savings Time or something else?

2

DST is probably the cause, but it could possibly be weirder things .. timezones are strange. you can set the timezone to a variable, and then examine its properties to see its local offset (offset_std) and when that offset is valid from/until:

iex> tz = Timex.timezone("America/Chicago", {2015,4,12})
iex> tz.offset_std
3600
iex> z = Timex.timezone("America/Chicago", {2015,1,12})
iex> tz.offset_std
0
iex> tz.from 
{:sunday, {{2014, 11, 2}, {1, 0, 0}}}
iex> tz.until                                           
{:sunday, {{2015, 3, 8}, {2, 0, 0}}}
3

Yeah that sure looks like it’s Daylight Savings Time. Thanks for the reply @jerdew!