C date and time functions

The C date and time functions are a group of functions in the standard library of the C programming language implementing date and time manipulation operations.^[1] They provide support for time acquisition, conversion between date formats, and formatted output to strings.

Overview of functions

The C date and time operations are defined in the time.h header file (ctime header in C++).

	Identifier	Description
Time manipulation	`difftime`	computes the difference in seconds between two `time_t` values
	`time`	returns the current time of the system as a `time_t` value, number of seconds, (which is usually time since an epoch, typically the Unix epoch). The value of the epoch is operating system dependent; 1900 and 1970 are often used. See RFC 868.
	`clock`	returns a processor tick count associated with the process
	`timespec_get` (C11)	returns a calendar time based on a time base
Format conversions	`asctime`	converts a `struct tm` object to a textual representation (deprecated)
	`ctime`	converts a `time_t` value to a textual representation
	`strftime`	converts a `struct tm` object to custom textual representation
	`wcsftime`	converts a `struct tm` object to custom wide string textual representation
	`gmtime`	converts a `time_t` value to calendar time expressed as Coordinated Universal Time^[2]
	`localtime`	converts a `time_t` value to calendar time expressed as local time
	`mktime`	converts calendar time to a `time_t` value.
Constants	`CLOCKS_PER_SEC`	number of processor clock ticks per second
Constants	`TIME_UTC`	time base for UTC
Types	`struct tm`	broken-down calendar time type: year, month, day, hour, minute, second
	`time_t`	arithmetic time type (typically time since the epoch)
	`clock_t`	process running time type
	`timespec`	time with seconds and nanoseconds

The timespec and related types were originally proposed by Markus Kuhn to provide a variety of time bases, but only TIME_UTC was accepted.^[3] The functionalities were, however, added to C++ in 2020 in std::chrono.

Example

The following C source code prints the current time to the standard output stream.

#include <time.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <stdio.h>

int main(void)
{
    time_t current_time;
    char* c_time_string;

    /* Obtain current time. */
    current_time = time(NULL);

    if (current_time == ((time_t)-1))
    {
        (void) fprintf(stderr, "Failure to obtain the current time.\n");
        exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
    }

    /* Convert to local time format. */
    c_time_string = ctime(&current_time);

    if (c_time_string == NULL)
    {
        (void) fprintf(stderr, "Failure to convert the current time.\n");
        exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
    }

    /* Print to stdout. ctime() has already added a terminating newline character. */
    (void) printf("Current time is %s", c_time_string);
    exit(EXIT_SUCCESS);
}

The output is:

Current time is Thu Sep 15 21:18:23 2016

References

^ ISO/IEC 9899:1999 specification (PDF). p. 351, § 7.32.2.
^ open-std.org - Committee Draft -- May 6, 2005 page 355
^ Markus Kuhn. "Modernized API for ISO C". cl.cam.ac.uk.

External links

[1] ISO/IEC 9899:1999 specification (PDF). p. 351, § 7.32.2.

[2] -std.org - Committee Draft -- May 6, 2005 page 355

[3] Markus Kuhn. "Modernized API for ISO C". cl.cam.ac.uk.

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Contents

C date and time functions

Overview of functions

Example

See also

References

External links