Doc #70994 [Opn->Nab]: Does gmdate() use UTC or GMT?

Edit report at https://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=70994&edit=1 ID: 70994 Updated by: derick@php.net Reported by: php at geheimeinformatie dot nl Summary: Does gmdate() use UTC or GMT? -Status: Open +Status: Not a bug Type: Documentation Problem Package: Date/time related PHP Version: Irrelevant Block user comment: N Private report: N New Comment: Thank you for taking the time to write to us, but this is not a bug. Please double-check the documentation available at http://www.php.net/manual/ and the instructions on how to report a bug at http://bugs.php.net/how-to-report.php Previous Comments: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [2015-12-19 17:05:58] derick@php.net @ajf: No, GMT is GMT - i.e. UTC+0. It does not change throughout the year. gmdate() uses UTC or, its expression GMT which is just UTC+0. Technically GMT and UTC, are not the same, but for PHP's purposes they are. For a background on that: http://derickrethans.nl/leap-seconds-and-what-to-do-with-them.html ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [2015-12-19 16:58:13] ajf@php.net "GMT observes European Summer Time"? Huh? Greenwich Mean Time is always UTC+00:00. During the summertime in the UK, we switch to British Summer Time, UTC+01:00, but GMT itself doesn't change. If the time zone is set to GMT, it will always match UTC. Am I missing something? Does PHP consider "GMT" to mean "Europe/London" instead? ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [2015-11-29 20:21:37] php at geheimeinformatie dot nl Description: ------------ The name of the function "gmdate" seems to suggest GMT, but some experimentation indicates that this function formats a date in UTC. The documentation currently says: > gmdate — Format a GMT/UTC date/time > [...] > Identical to the date() function except that the time returned is Greenwich Mean Time (GMT). and most user submitted notes on the same page seem to indicate that GMT and UTC are basically the same thing. They're not. GMT observes European Summer Time (or "daylight saving" to some), while UTC does not. So for about half the time, the resulting values wil differ by one hour. I recommend we change the documentation to remove all references to Greenwich (save for the one in the function name), and only ever mention UTC. Test script: --------------- According to the following script: <?php var_dump(date("e")); var_dump(gmdate("e")); ?> which outputs: > string(13) "Europe/Berlin" > string(3) "UTC" the documentation should read "UTC", not "GMT". ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- Edit this bug report at https://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=70994&edit=1