Military time

[C C Magnus Gustavsson]

I would like date (or rather strftime()) to be able to use letter
abbreviations for time zones ("military time").

(Likely it wouldn't be the most frequently used option, but from time
to time it'd be very useful.)

Perhaps something like this?


New options:

-l, --letter

print time zones as letters (commonly used for radio communication and
by the military)

-w, --word

like -l, but print the full word according to the international radio
alphabet


Examples (en_US locale, Stockholm time):

% date
Sun Aug 17 11:40:40 CEST 2003
% date +%Z
CEST
% date -l
Sun Aug 17 11:40:40 B 2003
% date -l +%Z
B
% date -w
Sun Aug 17 11:40:40 Bravo 2003
% date -w +%Z
Bravo
% date -lu
Sun Aug 17 09:40:40 Z 2003
% date -wu +%Z
Zulu
%


Time zones:

UTC-12  Yankee
UTC-11  X-ray
UTC-10  Whiskey
UTC- 9  Victor
UTC- 8  Uniform
UTC- 7  Tango
UTC- 6  Sierra
UTC- 5  Romeo
UTC- 4  Quebec
UTC- 3  Papa
UTC- 2  Oscar
UTC- 1  November
UTC     Zulu
UTC+ 1  Alpha
UTC+ 2  Bravo
UTC+ 3  Charlie
UTC+ 4  Delta
UTC+ 5  Echo
UTC+ 6  Foxtrot
UTC+ 7  Golf
UTC+ 8  Hotel
UTC+ 9  India
UTC+10  Kilo
UTC+11  Lima
UTC+12  Mike


(Perhaps it might be better to introduce new conversion specifiers?)

I feel I'm not to most qualified person to decide how something like
this would best be implemented. (Such as if the definition of struct
tm ought to be expanded.) I can give it a try though, if you feel an
actual patch would help significantly.

It would also be nice if setting the TZ variable to a letter zone
worked.

King regards,
C C Magnus Gustavsson