Re: IANA timezone abbreviations versus timezone_abbreviations

Andreas Karlsson <andreas@proxel.se> writes:
> On 12/13/24 12:33 AM, Tom Lane wrote:
>> What I think we should do about this is to teach timestamp
>> input to look into the current IANA time zone to see if it
>> knows the given abbreviation, and if so use that meaning
>> regardless of what timezone_abbreviations might say.

> I am not convinced this is an improvement. While this patch removes the 
> round-trip hazard it also makes it confusing to use the 
> timezone_abbreviations GUC since it can be overridden by IANA data based 
> on your current timezone. So you need to know all the, sometimes weird, 
> names for your current timezone. Seems unnecessarily hard to reason 
> about and wouldn't most people who use timezone_abbreviations rely on 
> the current behavior?

Presumably they're not that weird to the locals?

I am not sure what you mean by "people who use
timezone_abbreviations".  I think that's about everyone --- it's
not like the default setting doesn't contain any abbreviations.
(If it didn't then we'd not have such a problem...)

> But that said I personally only use ISO timestamps with numerical 
> offsets. Partially to avoid all this mess.

If you only use ISO notation then this doesn't matter to you
either way.

            regards, tom lane