PST</literal></entry>
<entry>time zone specified by abbreviation</entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry><literal>2003-04-12 04:05:06 America/New_York</literal></entry>
<entry>time zone specified by full name</entry>
</row>
</tbody>
</tgroup>
</table>
<table tocentry="1" id="datatype-timezone-table">
<title>Time Zone Input</title>
<tgroup cols="2">
<thead>
<row>
<entry>Example</entry>
<entry>Description</entry>
</row>
</thead>
<tbody>
<row>
<entry><literal>PST</literal></entry>
<entry>Abbreviation (for Pacific Standard Time)</entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry><literal>America/New_York</literal></entry>
<entry>Full time zone name</entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry><literal>PST8PDT</literal></entry>
<entry>POSIX-style time zone specification</entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry><literal>-8:00:00</literal></entry>
<entry>UTC offset for PST</entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry><literal>-8:00</literal></entry>
<entry>UTC offset for PST (ISO 8601 extended format)</entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry><literal>-800</literal></entry>
<entry>UTC offset for PST (ISO 8601 basic format)</entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry><literal>-8</literal></entry>
<entry>UTC offset for PST (ISO 8601 basic format)</entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry><literal>zulu</literal></entry>
<entry>Military abbreviation for UTC</entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry><literal>z</literal></entry>
<entry>Short form of <literal>zulu</literal> (also in ISO 8601)</entry>
</row>
</tbody>
</tgroup>
</table>
<para>
Refer to <xref linkend="datatype-timezones"/> for more information on how
to specify time zones.
</para>
</sect3>
<sect3 id="datatype-datetime-input-time-stamps">
<title>Time Stamps</title>
<indexterm>
<primary>timestamp</primary>
</indexterm>
<indexterm>
<primary>timestamp with time zone</primary>
</indexterm>
<indexterm>
<primary>timestamp without time zone</primary>
</indexterm>
<para>
Valid input for the time stamp types consists of the concatenation
of a date and a time, followed by an optional time zone,
followed by an optional <literal>AD</literal> or <literal>BC</literal>.
(Alternatively, <literal>AD</literal>/<literal>BC</literal> can appear
before the time zone, but this is not the preferred ordering.)
Thus:
<programlisting>
1999-01-08 04:05:06
</programlisting>
and:
<programlisting>
1999-01-08 04:05:06 -8:00
</programlisting>
are valid values, which follow the <acronym>ISO</acronym> 8601
standard. In addition, the common format:
<programlisting>
January 8 04:05:06 1999 PST
</programlisting>
is supported.
</para>
<para>
The <acronym>SQL</acronym> standard differentiates
<type>timestamp without time zone</type>
and <type>timestamp with time zone</type> literals by the presence of a
<quote>+</quote> or <quote>-</quote> symbol and time zone offset after
the time. Hence, according to the standard,
<programlisting>
TIMESTAMP '2004-10-19 10:23:54'
</programlisting>
is a <type>timestamp without time zone</type>, while
<programlisting>
TIMESTAMP '2004-10-19 10:23:54+02'
</programlisting>
is a <type>timestamp with time zone</type>.
<productname>PostgreSQL</productname> never examines the content of a
literal string before determining its type, and therefore will treat
both of the above as <type>timestamp without time zone</type>. To
ensure that a literal is treated as <type>timestamp with time
zone</type>,