Rails - Aug 2005 - get timezone abbreviation

This is probably more a Ruby than a rails question, but when I call
the method strftime("%Z") on a Time object, it returns the full time
zone name "Eastern Daylight Time".  Is there a way to get the
Abbreviation instead?

That''s what I feared.  Being a Java programmer new to Ruby,
I''m
looking for something like SimpleDateFormat.  mktime/strftime isn''t
nearly as flexible.  Being dependant on the system for the formating
isn''t a very portable solution.  In some situations I might want
"Eastern Daylight Time" (for selecting a timezone out of a drop-down,
for example) and in other situations I might and "EDT" (for printing
it in a timestamp).  Is there a way to do this?

On 8/7/05, Isaac Reuben <ireuben-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w@public.gmane.org>
wrote:
> Paul,
> 
> I get the abbreviation when I call that method.  It looks like it is
> dependent on the system you are running it on (I think Ruby is just
> asking the system for the timezone name, and then passing it back to
> you).
> 
> - Isaac
> 
> On 8/7/05, Paul Barry
<pauljbarry3-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w@public.gmane.org> wrote:
> > This is probably more a Ruby than a rails question, but when I call
> > the method strftime("%Z") on a Time object, it returns the
full time
> > zone name "Eastern Daylight Time".  Is there a way to get
the
> > Abbreviation instead?
>