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Is there any difference if I set the timezone to

  • timezone: "America/New_York"

verses

  • timezone: "America/Detroit"

Both States are in the same timezone but other than identifying exactly where you are in the timezone, what functionality does it offer?

UPDATE and FYI:

geonames.org does off the Timezone Id lookup which returns America/Detroit instead of America/New_York

Gilles 'SO- stop being evil'
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Phill Pafford
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1 Answers1

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If some state has its timezone changed (by a law...) but not the other one (or if this happened in the past and you look at dates in the past), you'll get an incorrect timezone. Otherwise there are no differences.

vinc17
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  • I was thinking it might have to do with the offset in hours? http://www.timeanddate.com/time/map/ – Phill Pafford Aug 23 '14 at 00:53
  • @PhillPafford Being in the same timezone means that the offsets are constantly the same for both locations (this implies that they must also have the same DST rules, but this map doesn't show the details about these rules over the years). – vinc17 Aug 23 '14 at 01:03
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    FYI - you can read the specific rules with comments for both locations in the tz sources. Michigan is here and New York is here. The diffferences are mostly due to when Michigan used DST in the 1970's. – Matt Johnson-Pint Aug 23 '14 at 17:40