Re: date.timezone E_WARNING -- Really necessary? What's the rationale?

On Thu, May 23, 2013 at 8:40 PM, Daniel Lowrey <rdlowrey@gmail.com> wrote: > I'm probably not the typical PHP user; I spend 99% of my PHP time > using the CLI (and not web SAPIs). > This means that I frequently run PHP without an .ini file. As a > result, when I use any of the date/time > functionality I invariably end up with this awesomeness: > > > Warning: date(): It is not safe to rely on the system's timezone > settings blah blah blah. > > Could I run $ php -d date.timezone=UTC myfile.php? Of course, > but > should that really be necessary? > It seems to me this warning caters to the very lowest common > denominator among PHP devs who can't > be bothered to understand how PHP handles timezones. The warning also > seems to assume that people only > use PHP as a web framework and not as an actual programming language > (otherwise I wouldn't have to > explain to the CLI which timezone I want to use). I don't need php.ini > ... I want to use PHP to *program*. > > If it's going to default to UTC anyway should there really be an > E_WARNING? Can't PHP just quietly use UTC? > The "U" in UTC *does* stand for "Universal," after all. It's a > sensible default and as such shouldn't > merit a warning. Besides, if someone doesn't understand what's > happening and gets unexpected date/time > results the first thing they're going to do (I hope) is hit their > favorite search engine for "set PHP timezone." > > Perhaps I'm the only person to experience ongoing annoyance at the > hands of this protective > "feature?" Is there a substantive reason why this warning exists other > than the error message's > suggestion that "you most likely misspelled the timezone identifier?" > I understand that one of PHP's > most attractive features is ease-of-use for programming novices but > you can only go so far in > preventing people who don't know what they're doing from shooting > themselves in the foot. > > I'm not sure if it's possible but perhaps a compromise might be to > disable this warning in the CLI, at least? Fully agreed. The warning is very annoying when using CLI. And even when not using CLI: The timezone is usually only relevant in production. I don't care if times are off a few hours when developing stuff. Nikita