ctime

ctime

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Converts an integer time value into a date and time string

 #include <time.h> char *ctime ( const time_t *seconds  ); 

The argument passed to the ctime( ) function is a pointer to a number interpreted as a number of seconds elapsed since the epoch (on Unix systems, January 1, 1970).

The function converts this value into a human-readable character string showing the local date and time, and returns a pointer to that string. The string is exactly 26 bytes long, including the terminating null character, and has the following format:

 Thu Apr 28 15:50:56 2005\n 

The argument's type, time_t, is defined in time.h, usually as a long or unsigned long integer.

The function call ctime(&seconds) is equivalent to asctime(localtime(&seconds)). A common way to obtain the argument value passed to ctime( ) is by calling the time( ) function, which returns the current time in seconds.

Example

 void logerror(int errorcode) {   time_t eventtime;   time(&eventtime);   fprintf( stderr, "%s: Error number %d occurred.\n",            ctime(&eventtime), errorcode ); } 

This code produces output like the following:

 Fri Sep  9 14:58:03 2005 : Error number 23 occurred. 

The output contains a line break because the string produced by ctime( ) ends in a newline character.

See Also

asctime( ), difftime( ), gmtime( ), localtime( ), mktime( ), strftime( ), time( )