Thanks for all your replies. In the end I went for fletch's suggestion to localise $ENV{ TZ }, because I needed to compute the difference between local time and the remote time and could not permit the code to switch to remote time throughout. Another factor in choosing the most convenient solution was that it was easier to use core modules only rather than require module installation all the way down the production line (dev -> test -> QA -> uat -> prod.) for so small a piece of code.

Update: OK to be honest I did not explicitly use 'local' because the tzset had to be repeated anyway. What I actually did was more like:

sub RemoteTime {
    my $realtz = $ENV{ TZ };
    my ( @return, $return );
    my $wantarray = wantarray;
    $ENV{ TZ } = shift;
    tzset;
    if ( $wantarray ) {
        @return = localtime();
    }
    else
        $return = localtime();
    }
    $ENV{ TZ } = $realtz;
    tzset;
    return $wantarray ? @return : $return;
}

[download]

-M

Free your mind

In reply to Re: Finding a remote time by Moron
in thread Finding a remote time by Moron

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.