NSCalendar and NSDate incompatibilty

Question

I am trying to access just the hours and minutes information from a NSDate.

So I used NSCalendar to do that. Below is my code:

     NSDateFormatter *dateFormatter = [[NSDateFormatter alloc] init];
    [dateFormatter setDateFormat:@"hh:mm"];
    NSDate *date = [NSDate date];
    NSCalendar *calendar = [NSCalendar currentCalendar];
    NSDateComponents *components = [calendar components:(kCFCalendarUnitHour | kCFCalendarUnitMinute) fromDate:date];
    NSInteger hour = [components hour];
    NSInteger minute = [components minute];
    NSLog(@"%@",date description);
    NSLog(@"Hour : %d MInutes: %d",hour,minute);

It does not give me the right information. Below is the Log:

2011-10-18 18:46:12.194 DateTest[1182:707] 2011-10-18 13:16:12 +0000 2011-10-18 18:46:12.198 DateTest[1182:707] Hour : 18 MInutes: 46

Another doubt is when the time is 18:46:12.194 it is logged as 13:16:12. Why is this difference?

Answer 1

Because you live in a time zone that is 5.5 hours ahead of GMT, and NSDate's -description method always returns a string formatted in the GM time zone.