That's very helpful, @cguevara, thank you.

So to summarize that result, Time::Piece->strptime always returns a gmtime instance (tzoffset = 0). If you want it in localtime, you need to convert that to a localtime instance. Correct?

My follow-up question, then, is how to achieve that same result if the time zone is not part of the date string? IOW, I want to parse "2017-06-19 10:07:42" into a localtime Time::Piece instance with epoch seconds of 1497892062 and a tzoffset of -25200.

I can use Time::Local and do this:

$ENV{'TZ'} = 'America/Los_Angeles';

my $epoch = timelocal(42,07,10,19,05,2017);
print "timelocal epoch: $epoch\n";
print "timelocal date: ", scalar localtime($epoch), "\n";
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Produces:

timelocal epoch: 1497892062
timelocal date: Mon Jun 19 10:07:42 2017
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But since strptime() always returns gmtime, is there a way to do that with Time::Piece currently? It will be treated as UTC and converting it to a localtime() will offset it by 7 hours (in this case).

#!/usr/bin/env perl

use strict;
use warnings;
use Time::Local;
use Time::Piece;

$ENV{'TZ'} = 'America/Los_Angeles';

my $datestr = '2017-06-19 10:07:42';

my $gmt   = Time::Piece->strptime($datestr, '%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S');
my $local = localtime($gmt->epoch);

print "gmt epoch: ", $gmt->epoch, "\n",
      "local epoch: ", $local->epoch, "\n",
      "datestr: $datestr\n",
      "T::P gmt strftime: ", $gmt->strftime, "\n",
      "T::P local strftime: ", $local->strftime, "\n"
;
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Produces

gmt epoch: 1497866862
local epoch: 1497866862
datestr: 2017-06-19 10:07:42
T::P gmt strftime: Mon, 19 Jun 2017 10:07:42 UTC
T::P local strftime: Mon, 19 Jun 2017 03:07:42 PDT
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Of course you could always append the zone that you want to the date string, but that's cheating ;)

#!/usr/bin/env perl

use strict;
use warnings;

use Test::More ('no_plan');
use Time::Piece;

$ENV{'TZ'} = 'America/Los_Angeles';

my $datestr = '2017-06-19 10:07:42';

my $t = localtime->strptime($datestr, '%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S');

is($Time::Piece::VERSION, 1.31);

is($t->epoch, 1497892062);

is($t->tzoffset, -25200);

is($t->strftime, 'Mon, 19 Jun 2017 10:07:42 PDT');

is($t->strftime('%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S'), $datestr);
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Thanks again. So localtime()->strptime does behave differently.

So localtime()->strptime's handling of time zones is the underlying issue. Certainly these two should be equivalent, no?

#!/usr/bin/env perl

use strict;
use warnings;

use Test::More ('no_plan');
use Time::Piece;

$ENV{'TZ'} = 'America/Los_Angeles';

my @tests = (
  ['2017-06-19 10:07:42', '%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S'],
  ['2017-06-19 10:07:42-0700', '%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S%z'],
);

is($Time::Piece::VERSION, 1.31);

foreach my $test (@tests) {
  my ($datestr, $fmt) = @$test;
  my $t = localtime->strptime($datestr, $fmt);

  is($t->epoch, 1497892062);
  is($t->tzoffset, -25200);
  is($t->strftime, 'Mon, 19 Jun 2017 10:07:42 PDT');
  is($t->strftime('%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S'), $datestr);
}
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Result

ok 1
ok 2
ok 3
ok 4
ok 5
not ok 6
#   Failed test at ./try7 line 22.
#          got: '1497917262'
#     expected: '1497892062'
ok 7
not ok 8
#   Failed test at ./try7 line 24.
#          got: 'Mon, 19 Jun 2017 17:07:42 PDT'
#     expected: 'Mon, 19 Jun 2017 10:07:42 PDT'
not ok 9
#   Failed test at ./try7 line 25.
#          got: '2017-06-19 17:07:42'
#     expected: '2017-06-19 10:07:42-0700'
1..9
# Looks like you failed 3 tests of 9.
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