While poking around in gnu/testlet/java/util/SimpleTimeZone/check12.java
i found the following code: 

    Date date = new Date(1034705556525l);
    TimeZone zone  = TimeZone.getTimeZone("EST");
    DateFormat dateFormat = DateFormat.getDateTimeInstance(
                        DateFormat.SHORT,
                        DateFormat.LONG,
                        Locale.getDefault());
    dateFormat.setTimeZone(zone);
    harness.check("10/15/2002 2:12:36 PM EDT", dateFormat.format(date));

To me this seems problematic for two reasons:

1) The test depends on the locale of the test environment

2) More generally it depends on exactly matching formatting rules from
the DateFormat instance, something I believe is not specified. In other
words it is possible that a spec conforming implementation fails the
test because it formats dates in a slightly different way.

In the attached patch i have replaced the getDateTimeInstance() call
with a SimpleDateFormat that should behave consistently in all locales
and jvms. Please apply.

Since I have a few patches now awaiting
review/comments/inclusion/rejection I have collected them in
http://resare.com/noa/mauve/patches for easy access. If anyone wants to
try them out, apply them in lexical order.

/noa