Is there a difference between Europe/London and UTC in PHP? [closed]

Question

I know that UTC and GMT are effectively the same thing.

BST (British Standard Time) is GMT +- 1 hour depending on DST (Daylight Saving Time).

With that in mind, how is Europe/London interpreted in PHP? Is it basically UTC/GMT?

Answer 1

how is Europe/London interpreted in PHP? Is it basically UTC/GMT?

They are not the same (UTC/GMT has no daylight savings). As of this writing they are an hour apart:

$utc = new DateTime('now', new DateTimeZone('UTC'));
echo $utc->format('Y-m-d H:i:s'); // output: 2013-06-03 15:37:08

$el = new DateTime('now', new DateTimeZone('Europe/London'));
echo $el->format('Y-m-d H:i:s'); //  output: 2013-06-03 16:37:08