>>>>> "Tom" == Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> writes:
Tom> The weird thing about this allegedly-POSIX notation is the combination
Tom> of a symbolic name and a further offset from it.
AIUI, it is not a further offset but rather (mostly-)redundant data
specifying the exact offset from UTC¹ the text tz specifies. Having
both provides easy parsing both for humans (the text) and for code
(the number).
-JimC
[1] Of course POSIX time is not really offset from UTC, since POSIX
pretends there have been no leap seconds since 1970. As such
the timestamps are technically ambiguous as to whether the specify
real UTC-based time or POSIX time.... (Currently there is a
23-second difference between the two.)
--
James Cloos <cloos@jhcloos.com> OpenPGP: 0xED7DAEA6