The %s specifier in strftime doesn't respect timezones. Example: #include <time.h> #include <stdio.h> int main() { time_t t = 1234567890; struct tm *tmp = gmtime(&t); char output[200]; strftime(output, 200, "%s", tmp); printf("%s\n",output); return 0; } Run with a non UTC timezone. e.g. TZ=GMT+9 Output will be 1234600290 instead of expected 1234567890 Location in BSD's libc: https://svnweb.freebsd.org/base/release/10.0.0/lib/libc/stdtime/strftime.c?view=markup#l312 This bug also exists in glibc: http://fossies.org/dox/glibc-2.19/strftime__l_8c_source.html#l01133 Bug filed at https://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=17189 It does not occur in musl: http://git.musl-libc.org/cgit/musl/tree/src/time/strftime.c?id=ac0acd569e01735fc6052d43fdf57f3a07c93f3d#n127
It's hard to say if it's a bug in FreeBSD libc and glibc or if it's a bug in musl as %s is NOT specified by POSIX. See bug #30321 for more details.