On Wed, 12 Apr 2006, der Mouse wrote:
> That is, what I think of as UTC-0400 corresponds to Etc/GMT+4, not
> Etc/GMT-4.
> 
> What's wrong here?  Am I wrong to interpret Etc/GMT-4 as being
> UTC-0400, or am I wrong to think that I'm in UTC-0400 when I'm four
> hours west of Greenwich, or are the file signs backwards?

The file names are confusing, for historical reasons.
See the comments in src/share/zoneinfo/etcetera.

You should not be setting the TZ variable to any of the Etc/GMT[+-]*
values.  Rather use TZ=America/Montreal, which knows the daylight
savings rules and knows to print "EST" or "EDT" in appropriate places.

--apb (Alan Barrett)