How can I use different default date formats or time zones

Reality uses the underlying hardware and Operating System to provide the real-time clock and calendar. You can use Reality DATE-FORMAT and UNIX TZ to adjust the defaults.

Date Format:
The default display from English and DataBasic output is the international form of dd/mm/yyyy. In order to change this to the standard MultiValue form of mm/dd/yyyy you can use the TCL command DATE-FORMAT, which will set the required format for the duration of the current login session.

For details refer to DATE-FORMAT in the On-Line Documentation Index. To change it permanently for a database use the "DateFormat=" parameter in the config file. For details refer to "config file, parameters" in the Index.

Timezones:
Unix systems are designed so that their hardware clock is set to GMT, also known as UCT, and a local time zone is then set so users see their expected local time.  Users can then modify the time they see by setting the TZ (TimeZone) environment variable.

For example:
Setting TZ=EST and running the ‘date’ command will show the time for American Eastern Standard Time. Reality correctly handles the TZ environment variable so running a "TZ=EST reality dbase_name" command will run a Reality user in any time zone you wish – Eastern Standard Time in this case.

To set up multiple databases on a System, each with their own time zone, this would currently have to be done using a "group of users" for each required time zone. For example, their login process could run the UNIX .profile with TZ=??? within it.

Notes:

1. Use “man timezone” at the Unix shell prompt for more information on Unix time zones.
    
2. This method of setting the time zone is currently only available on UNIX platforms.
    
3. Although later releases of Windows use the TZ environment variable this is currently not deployed within Reality.

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