Yep, http://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man3/strptime.3.html does support it even if it might look asymetrical.

Example:

           struct tm tm;
           char buf[255];

           memset(&tm, 0, sizeof(struct tm));
           strptime("+00:00", "%z", &tm);
           strftime(buf, sizeof(buf), "%z", &tm);
           puts(buf); // Will print +0000
           exit(EXIT_SUCCESS);

Martin do you want me to "cleanup" the PR, add docs, news entry, etc?