title: Scheduling scripts at a different timezone
body: <p>There are some programs/scripts that need to be run at specific times in a timezone <strong>different</strong> from the system timezone.</p>
  
  <p>A la crontab in Perl, but one that honors a timezone and DST rules in a region different from that in which the system is configured.</p>
  
  <p>Here is the use case : I will create an excel sheet with the time in PT in column B and the corresponding program/Perl script to run in column C.</p>
  
  <p>Nothing specific about this information being in a Excel sheet - could be plain text file/"crontab" entry too.</p>
  
  <p>A Perl script will read in the data from the excel sheet and run/spawn those scripts at the correct time.</p>
  
  <p>The thing to keep at mind is that the Perl script should run correctly regardless of what timezone the system that it is running on is.</p>
  
  <p>Regardless of whether the script is running on a Box in NY or IL or CA, it should spawn the scripts at the time mentioned in the file entries as per the Pacific Standard Time with DST at mind.</p>
  
  <p>It is very important, as I said before, of it being aware, "<em>automagically</em>" ( without me doing any explicit programmming ) of the latest DST rules for the PT region.</p>
  
  <p>What would you suggest?</p>
  
  <p>Maybe I can visit some website that shows current time in that region and scan the time value from it, and run the scripts when it's the correct time?</p>
  
  <p>Any such Perl screen scraper friendly site?</p>
  
  <p>Or maybe I can use some smart Perl module, like <a href="http://metacpan.org/pod/Schedule::Cron" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Schedule::Cron</a></p>
  
  <p>For the record, a large number of good suggestions came by at <a href="http://www.perlmonks.org/index.pl?node_id=772934" rel="nofollow noreferrer">http://www.perlmonks.org/index.pl?node_id=772934</a>, <strong>however</strong>, they, in typical at/cron fashion, work as per the system configured timezone.</p>