I'm probably not the typical PHP user; I spend 99% of my PHP time using the CLI (and not web SAPIs). This means that I frequently run PHP without an .ini file. As a result, when I use any of the date/time functionality I invariably end up with this awesomeness:
> Warning: date(): It is not safe to rely on the system's timezone settings > blah blah blah. Could I run `$ php -d date.timezone=UTC myfile.php`? Of course, but should that really be necessary? It seems to me this warning caters to the very lowest common denominator among PHP devs who can't be bothered to understand how PHP handles timezones. The warning also seems to assume that people only use PHP as a web framework and not as an actual programming language (otherwise I wouldn't have to explain to the CLI which timezone I want to use). I don't need php.ini ... I want to use PHP to *program*. If it's going to default to UTC anyway should there really be an E_WARNING? Can't PHP just quietly use UTC? The "U" in UTC *does* stand for "Universal," after all. It's a sensible default and as such shouldn't merit a warning. Besides, if someone doesn't understand what's happening and gets unexpected date/time results the first thing they're going to do (I hope) is hit their favorite search engine for "set PHP timezone." Perhaps I'm the only person to experience ongoing annoyance at the hands of this protective "feature?" Is there a substantive reason why this warning exists other than the error message's suggestion that "you most likely misspelled the timezone identifier?" I understand that one of PHP's most attractive features is ease-of-use for programming novices but you can only go so far in preventing people who don't know what they're doing from shooting themselves in the foot. I'm not sure if it's possible but perhaps a compromise might be to disable this warning in the CLI, at least? -- PHP Internals - PHP Runtime Development Mailing List To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
