6.6 Date and Time Types

The date field type specifier can be used to declare dates and times. The synopsis is:

%typedef: type_name date

There are many permitted date formats, described in detail later in this manual (see Date input formats). Of particular note are the following:

• - Dates and times read from recfiles are not affected by the locale or the timezone. This means that the LC_TIME and the TZ environment variables are ignored. If you wish, for example, to specify a time which must be interpreted as UTC, you must explicitly append the time zone correction: e.g. ‘2001-1-10 12:09Z’.
• - The field value ‘1/10/2001’ means January 10, 2001, not October 1, 2001.
• - Relative times and dates (such as ‘1 day ago’) are permitted but are not particularly useful.