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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-27T05:33:46+00:00

How do I get the Olson timezone name (such as Australia/Sydney ) corresponding to

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How do I get the Olson timezone name (such as Australia/Sydney) corresponding to the value given by C’s localtime call?

This is the value overridden via TZ, by symlinking /etc/localtime, or setting a TIMEZONE variable in time-related system configuration files.

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    I think best bet is to go thru all pytz timezones and check which one matches local timezone, each pytz timezone object contains info about utcoffset and tzname like CDT, EST, same info about local time can be obtained from time.timezone/altzone and time.tzname, and I think that is enough to correctly match local timezone in pytz database e.g.

    import time
import pytz
import datetime

local_names = []
if time.daylight:
    local_offset = time.altzone
    localtz = time.tzname[1]
else:
    local_offset = time.timezone
    localtz = time.tzname[0]

local_offset = datetime.timedelta(seconds=-local_offset)

for name in pytz.all_timezones:
    timezone = pytz.timezone(name)
    if not hasattr(timezone, '_tzinfos'):
        continue#skip, if some timezone doesn't have info
    # go thru tzinfo and see if short name like EDT and offset matches
    for (utcoffset, daylight, tzname), _ in timezone._tzinfos.iteritems():
        if utcoffset == local_offset and tzname == localtz:
            local_names.append(name)

print local_names

    output:

    [‘America/Atikokan’, ‘America/Bahia_Banderas’,
    ‘America/Bahia_Banderas’, ‘America/Belize’, ‘America/Cambridge_Bay’,
    ‘America/Cancun’, ‘America/Chicago’, ‘America/Chihuahua’,
    ‘America/Coral_Harbour’, ‘America/Costa_Rica’, ‘America/El_Salvador’,
    ‘America/Fort_Wayne’, ‘America/Guatemala’,
    ‘America/Indiana/Indianapolis’, ‘America/Indiana/Knox’,
    ‘America/Indiana/Marengo’, ‘America/Indiana/Marengo’,
    ‘America/Indiana/Petersburg’, ‘America/Indiana/Tell_City’,
    ‘America/Indiana/Vevay’, ‘America/Indiana/Vincennes’,
    ‘America/Indiana/Winamac’, ‘America/Indianapolis’, ‘America/Iqaluit’,
    ‘America/Kentucky/Louisville’, ‘America/Kentucky/Louisville’,
    ‘America/Kentucky/Monticello’, ‘America/Knox_IN’,
    ‘America/Louisville’, ‘America/Louisville’, ‘America/Managua’,
    ‘America/Matamoros’, ‘America/Menominee’, ‘America/Merida’,
    ‘America/Mexico_City’, ‘America/Monterrey’,
    ‘America/North_Dakota/Beulah’, ‘America/North_Dakota/Center’,
    ‘America/North_Dakota/New_Salem’, ‘America/Ojinaga’,
    ‘America/Pangnirtung’, ‘America/Rainy_River’, ‘America/Rankin_Inlet’,
    ‘America/Resolute’, ‘America/Resolute’, ‘America/Tegucigalpa’,
    ‘America/Winnipeg’, ‘CST6CDT’, ‘Canada/Central’, ‘Mexico/General’,
    ‘US/Central’, ‘US/East-Indiana’, ‘US/Indiana-Starke’]

    In production you can create such a mapping beforehand and save it instead of iterating always.

    Testing script after changing timezone:

    $ export TZ=’Australia/Sydney’
    $ python get_tz_names.py
    [‘Antarctica/Macquarie’, ‘Australia/ACT’, ‘Australia/Brisbane’,
    ‘Australia/Canberra’, ‘Australia/Currie’, ‘Australia/Hobart’,
    ‘Australia/Lindeman’, ‘Australia/Melbourne’, ‘Australia/NSW’,
    ‘Australia/Queensland’, ‘Australia/Sydney’, ‘Australia/Tasmania’,
    ‘Australia/Victoria’]

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