Invalid TimeZone. Please Move.

[SoMad]

Almost 12 years ago (before I joined the company :) ), this little beauty almost made it into the release build of one of our applications:

// We need a time zone
CString strTimeZone;
timeb timeptr;
ftime(&timeptr);
long TimeZone = (long)timeptr.timezone/(long)60;

switch(TimeZone)
{
case 8:
strTimeZone = "P";
break;
case 7:
strTimeZone = "M";
break;
case 6:
strTimeZone = "C";
break;
case 5:
strTimeZone = "E";
break;
default:
AfxMessageBox("Invalid TimeZone. Please Move.");
}

Soren Madsen

[OriginalGriff]

It's not a horror - at least he checked - but it's not that helpful an error message, I must admit. However, it does give advice on how to solve the problem which is a vast improvement on most MS error messages of 12 years ago! :laugh:

Ideological Purity is no substitute for being able to stick your thumb down a pipe to stop the water

[Sander Rossel]

I think that serves people right for living in invalid timezones! I'm glad someone was finally willing to tell them ;p I'm pretty sure the programmer was thinking of timezones such as GMT+4,35 and GMT-27 :)

It's an OO world.

public class Naerling : Lazy<Person>{
public void DoWork(){ throw new NotImplementedException(); }
}

[SoMad]

I wanted to share this, so I actually went to find it in our old SourceSafe database. I deleted a few lines of code that really did nothing, so what you see is what it did. Today in its place, the code formats a date/time with abbreviated time zone and Daylight saving information - getting the TZ abbreviation right is still a hit and miss (when TZ is outside the US), but at least you don't have to move :) Soren Madsen

[SoMad]

You are a true the-glass-is-half-full guy :laugh: Soren Madsen

[satovey]

I recall seeing an error message something like that a while back. I thought it was rather stupid, given the fact that I had just clicked on an item in a drop down list. I think someone was trying to be funny. ST

[RafagaX]

Well i suppose it wasn't meant to be used outside North America, so it may help avoid the use of illegal copies of that program on China. :laugh:

CEO at: - Rafaga Systems - Para Facturas - Modern Components for the moment...

[wizardzz]

Well, he accounted for EST, not EDT, so I assume for most of the year he got an error for east coast users.

[jschell]

SoMad wrote:

getting the TZ abbreviation right

You mean something like "MST"? Simple solution then - there is no deterministic way to solve this because there are time zone abbreviations that are the same for different zones. Best one can do is to - Use a numeric offset - Require an environment configuration that matches that offset.

[JackDingler]

If it builds, ship it.