CTZ

CTZ is an acronym that can refer to different concepts in distinct fields. The most common meanings are in timekeeping and computing, with the intended interpretation usually clear from the context.

In timekeeping, CTZ commonly stands for the Central Time Zone. This time zone covers a large swath of North America and serves as a standard reference for scheduling across regions that observe Central Standard Time (CST, UTC-6) and Central Daylight Time (CDT, UTC-5) during daylight saving time. Regions that observe Central Time include portions of the United States, parts of Canada and Mexico, and some Central American areas. DST observance and exact regional boundaries can vary by country and year, so local time references are often preferred for precision.

In computing, CTZ refers to the count trailing zeros operation. This bit-manipulation function returns the number of consecutive zero bits to the right of the least significant 1-bit in an integer’s binary representation. It is a common primitive in low-level programming, used in algorithms for bit scanning, arithmetic, and optimizations. Many languages provide built-in support (for example, compiler intrinsics such as __builtin_ctz in C/C++) and, in some environments, the behavior for an input of zero is undefined or depends on the word size. CTZ is related to, but distinct from, CLZ, which counts leading zeros.

Because CTZ has multiple meanings, its interpretation should be guided by the subject matter and surrounding terminology.