Question

Does Unix store the offset of the machine from GMT internally?
like for eg:india standard time is GMT + 5:30.is this 5:30 stored some where?

i need this to use it in a script like below

if[[ off is "some value"]]
then
some statements
fi

Answer 1

The following program prints ‘-04:00′ for me in EDT and prints ’04:30’ when I set TZ to ‘Asia/Kolkata’:

#include <stdio.h>
#include <time.h>

int
main ()
{
    int hours;
    int minutes;
    int negative_sign = 1;

    tzset ();
    // printf ("tzname: %s tzname[1]: %s\n", tzname [0], tzname [1]);
    // printf ("DST: %d\n", daylight); /* 0 when no DST */
    // printf ("timezone: %ld\n", timezone);
    /* 'timezone' is the number of seconds west of GMT */
    /* It is negative for tzs east of GMT */
    if (timezone <= 0) {
        timezone = -timezone;
        negative_sign = 0;
    }

    if (daylight) {
        timezone -= 3600; /* substract 1h when DST is active */
        if (timezone <= 0) {
            timezone = -timezone;
            negative_sign = 0;
        }
    }
    timezone /= 60; /* convert to minutes */
    hours = timezone / 60;
    minutes = timezone % 60;
    printf ("%s%02d:%02d\n", (negative_sign ? "-" : ""), hours, minutes);
    return 0;
}

Feel free to use/change whatever you want and then call it from your shell script.