[R] timezone problems

[Martin Keller-Ressel]

Thank you Don for your hints. I have checked my environment vairable TZ  
again. But everything is set correctly. I think the problem is with  
Sys.timezone(). Maybe it is a conflict between how my system formats the  
time/date and what Sys.timezone() expects.
This is what I get on my system:

> Sys.getenv("TZ")
    TZ
"GMT"
> Sys.time()
[1] "2005-07-07 07:32:39 GMT"

## everything fine so far

> Sys.timezone()
[1] NA

## This is what Sys.timezone looks like:
> Sys.timezone
function ()
{
     z <- as.POSIXlt(Sys.time())
     attr(z, "tzone")[2 + z$isdst]
}
<environment: namespace:base>

> z <- as.POSIXlt(Sys.time())
> attributes(z)
$names
[1] "sec"   "min"   "hour"  "mday"  "mon"   "year"  "wday"  "yday"  "isdst"

$class
[1] "POSIXt"  "POSIXlt"

$tzone
[1] "GMT"

> attr(z,"tzone")
[1] "GMT"
> z$isdst
[1] 0
> attr(z,"tzone")[2]
[1] NA

I dont understand why Sys.timezone doesn't use attr(z,"tzone") but tries  
to read its (2+z$isdst)-th element.
Of course it would be easy to write a workaround, but I wonder why nobody  
else is having this problem.

best regards,

Martin Keller-Ressel



On Wed, 06 Jul 2005 14:45:25 -0000, Don MacQueen <macq at llnl.gov> wrote:

> How did you set the TZ system variable?
> If you did not use Sys.putenv(), try using it instead.
> Otherwise, I think you have to ask the package maintainer.
>
> You may be misleading yourself by using Sys.time() to test whether TZ is  
> set.
> What does Sys.getenv() tell you?
>
> I get a timezone code from Sys.time() even when TZ is not defined (see  
> example below).
> (but I do have a different OS)
>
>>  Sys.timezone()
> [1] ""
>>  Sys.time()
> [1] "2005-07-06 07:34:15 PDT"
>>  Sys.getenv('TZ')
> TZ
> ""
>>  Sys.putenv(TZ='US/Pacific')
>>  Sys.timezone()
> [1] "US/Pacific"
>>  Sys.getenv('TZ')
>            TZ
> "US/Pacific"
>>  Sys.time()
> [1] "2005-07-06 07:34:38 PDT"
>
>>  Sys.putenv(TZ='GMT')
>>  Sys.time()
> [1] "2005-07-06 14:35:45 GMT"
>
>>  version
>           _                       platform powerpc-apple-darwin7.9.0
> arch     powerpc                 os       darwin7.9.0              
> system   powerpc, darwin7.9.0    status                            
> major    2                       minor    1.1                      
> year     2005                    month    06                       
> day      20                      language R                        
> At 9:55 AM +0000 7/5/05, Martin Keller-Ressel wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> Im using R 2.1.1 and running Code that previously worked (on R 2.1.0 I  
>> believe) using the 'timeDate' function from the fCalendar package. The  
>> code now throws an error:
>>
>> Error in if (Sys.timezone() != "GMT") warning("Set timezone to GMT!")
>>
>> However I have read the documentation of the fCalendar package and I  
>> have set my system variable TZ to GMT.
>> I tracked the error down to the function Sys.timezone() which returns  
>> NA in spite of what Sys.time() returns.
>>
>>>  Sys.timezone()
>> [1] NA
>>
>>>  Sys.time()
>> [1] "2005-07-05 08:41:53 GMT"
>>
>> My version:
>>
>>>  version
>>           _
>> platform i386-pc-mingw32
>> arch     i386
>> os       mingw32
>> system   i386, mingw32
>> status
>> major    2
>> minor    1.1
>> year     2005
>> month    06
>> day      20
>> language R
>>
>> Any help is appreciated,
>>
>> Martin Keller-Ressel
>>
>>
>> ---
>> Martin Keller-Ressel
>> Research Unit of Financial and Actuarial Mathematics
>> TU Vienna
>>
>> ______________________________________________
>> R-help at stat.math.ethz.ch mailing list
>> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
>> PLEASE do read the posting guide!  
>> http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
>
>



-- 
Martin Keller-Ressel
Research Unit of Financial and Actuarial Mathematics
TU Vienna