Time zones are my latest headache.

I need to have some programs handle data from multiple times zones,
automatically determining whether Daylight Savings Time is in effect, and
automatically taking Daylight Savings Time into account (or ignoring it).

Were it not for places which don't recognize daylight savings time
(Arizona, part of Indiana, Hawaii, Puerto Rico) I wouldn't have to worry
about daylight savings times, but these areas don't switch to daylight
savings time, and thus need to be accommodated.

I know I can find out what the time is in Hawaii (or other non-local time
zones) from the shell by:

shell/iX> TZ="HST10"
shell/iX> date +%H
09

but I need find the hour (in the target time zone) from within a SPLASH! or
Business Basic program and I need to find it fast (the shell is at least an
order of magnitude too slow).

Question 1:
Is TZTAB replaced by patches or when a new version of MPE is installed?
Since some of the time zones I need to accommodate are not listed in the
TZTAB file, I'll need to add entries for them.  If there is a significant
risk that the TZTAB file will be replaced by HP, I'll need to make sure my
customized file "replaces" the HP file on a daily basis before
production.  However, I'll also need to capture the new HP supplied file
when it appears.

Question 2:
Is there a C library procedure (or Intrinsic that I've missed) that I can
call from SPLASH! (or Business Basic) that lets me pass a TZ value to it
(ex. "EST5EDT" or "HST10"), and it returns the current hour (24 hour
format) in the specified time zone?

Thanks for your help!

John

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