NSTimeZone and special time zone area Etc

Question

Is it correct to assume that NSTimeZone timeZoneWithName: in iOS 7 accepts both time zone IDs with non-special areas (as in America/New_York) and with the special area (as in Etc/UTC) but that NSTimeZone name will never return the special area (but would return e.g. Europe/London instead)?

Who can confirm this?

Answer 1

I don't think that's a safe assumption. On OS X, in my time zone and locale (US English, UTC-6), I can run the following code:

    NSTimeZone *utc = [NSTimeZone timeZoneWithName:@"Etc/UTC"];
    NSTimeZone *london = [NSTimeZone timeZoneWithName:@"Europe/London"];
    NSLog(@"utc name = %@", [utc name]);
    NSLog(@"london name = %@", [london name]);

Which gives the following output:

utc name = Etc/UTC

london name = Europe/London

So If a time zone was given a special area in instantiating it, it will continue to use that with its name. As an added layer of complication, using +timeZoneWithAbbreviation: will also get different names, e.g.:

    NSTimeZone *utc2 = [NSTimeZone timeZoneWithAbbreviation:@"UTC"];
    NSLog(@"utc2 name = %@", [utc2 name]);

utc2 name = GMT