Timezoner

Timezoner is a term used to describe software, libraries, services, or concepts that manage time zone information and perform time conversions. It is commonly employed in scheduling, logging, and internationalization to ensure that times are represented correctly across different regions.

Etymology: The name combines time, zone, and the agent suffix -er, signaling a tool or system that handles time zone data.

Core functionality typically includes: lookup of time zone data, conversion between zones for a given timestamp, handling daylight saving time changes, and formatting or parsing date-time values according to local rules.

Data sources and standards: Timezoners rely on time zone databases such as the IANA Time Zone Database (tz database) or zoneinfo. They use zone identifiers like America/New_York and apply rules to convert UTC to local times.

Applications: calendar software, distributed systems, logging, travel planning, and any platform that must interpret or display times consistently across borders.

Limitations: time zone rules can change, daylight saving policies are updated, and historical offsets vary. Regular updates are required to maintain accuracy.

See also: time zone, UTC, IANA Time Zone Database, ISO 8601, daylight saving time.