neglecting daylight savings

Hi Python community,

I am trying to convert UTC to PST and want to neglect daylight savings even for the days that are in PDT, not PST. I simply want every UTC date to be pushed back by 8 hours and not worry about the days when the difference is really -7 due to daylight savings. I have written a function called utc_to_local (pasted below) that reads in the UTC year, month, day, and hour from a main code and returns that value in local standard time. The problem is that I can't figure out how to "turn off" the automatic daylight savings switch that appears be built in to somewhere.

Here is some sample output showing the daylight savings switch on April 2, 1995 at 2am local time, which I would like to override.

1995-04-02 08 UTC = 1995-04-02 00 PST
1995-04-02 09 UTC = 1995-04-02 01 PST
1995-04-02 10 UTC = 1995-04-02 03 PDT
1995-04-02 11 UTC = 1995-04-02 04 PDT

I want the third line of the output to read "1995-04-02 02" PST, the fourth to read "1995-04-02 03", etc.
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from datetime import datetime
from pytz import timezone
import pytz

def utc_to_local(yr,mo,dy,hr):
fmt = '%Y-%m-%d %H %Z'
utc = pytz.utc
pacific = pytz.timezone("America/Los_Angeles")
utc_dt = datetime(yr,mo,dy,hr, tzinfo=utc)
loc_dt = utc_dt.astimezone(pacific) # local date YY-MM-DD HR TZ
print utc_dt.strftime(fmt), "=", loc_dt.strftime(fmt)
loc_y = loc_dt.year # local year
loc_m = loc_dt.month # local month
loc_d = loc_dt.day # local day
loc_h = loc_dt.hour # local hour

return loc_y, loc_m, loc_d, loc_h
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Python 2.6
Mac OS X 10.6.4
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Any help is much appreciated.

Thank you in advance,
Neil Berg

Neil Berg <nberg@atmos.ucla.edu> writes:

> I am trying to convert UTC to PST and want to neglect daylight savings
> even for the days that are in PDT, not PST.

Then you don't want “PST�. That name entails all the rules of the time
zone. If that's not what you want, don't ask timezone libraries for it.

Similarly for the timezone named “America/Los_Angeles�; if you ask for
that you are explicitly asking for all the time changes that zone
entails. If you don't want it, don't ask for it.

If you want exactly the same offset all the time, regardless of
government DST silliness, ask for it: “UTC-8�, for example, or whatever
the fixed offset from UTC you want.

--
\ “Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a |
`\ dog, it's too dark to read.� —Groucho Marx |
_o__) |
Ben Finney