Before I attack the code with the debugger, I'd like to see if anybody has already figured this out...

I want to convert the times used to a consistent timezone (we'll say US/Central)

For starters, I use the following code to get the system time on my box

#!/usr/bin/perl
use Date::Manip
print UnixDate( ParseDate('today'), "%A, %B %E, %Y -- %R %Z\n");

It yields the following output:

Monday, March 19th, 2001 -- 18:44 MST

Now, according to the perldoc for Date::Manip, this code should do the conversion:

#!/usr/bin/perl
use Date::Manip;
Date_Init("ConvTZ=CST");
print UnixDate( ParseDate('today'), "%A, %B %E, %Y -- %R %Z\n");

But this is what it gives me:

Monday, March 19th, 2001 -- 20:52 CST

Aside from the fact that I get myriad errors when trying to pass 'US/Central' into ConvTZ with Date_Init. And if I just set $Date::Manip::TZ with Date_Init, no conversion takes place (it just changes what you get when you use a %Z token).

Apparently it's adding two hours instead of just one. Even better, if I tell it to convert from the local time (which is MST) to CDT, it adds four hours.

Am I doing something wrong, or is this a bug in Date::Manip? Any suggestsions?

Thanks, folks.