Time Zone Handling

Definitions

1. One of the hardest problems in programming. Rules: store all timestamps in UTC, convert to local time only for display. Use IANA timezone names (America/New_York, not EST). DST transitions mean some local times don't exist and some occur twice. Time zones have changed historically and will change again. Never calculate time offsets manually -- use a library.

   In plain English: The notoriously tricky problem of handling times across different time zones, daylight saving changes, and historical rule changes.

   Example: "Store created_at as TIMESTAMPTZ (UTC) in PostgreSQL, never TIMESTAMP WITHOUT TIME ZONE -- the latter loses timezone information and causes bugs on DST transitions."

Related Terms

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• Memory Leak
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