time(3) BSD Library Functions Manual time(3)
NAME
time -- get time of day
LIBRARY
Standard C Library (libc, -lc)
SYNOPSIS
#include <time.h>
time_t
time(time_t *tloc);
DESCRIPTION
The time() function returns the value of time in seconds since 0 hours, 0
minutes, 0 seconds, January 1, 1970, Coordinated Universal Time, without
including leap seconds. If an error occurs, time() returns the value
(time_t)-1.
The return value is also stored in *tloc, provided that tloc is non-null.
ERRORS
The time() function may fail for any of the reasons described in
gettimeofday(2).
SEE ALSO
gettimeofday(2), ctime(3)
STANDARDS
The time function conforms to IEEE Std 1003.1-2001 (``POSIX.1'').
BUGS
Neither ISO/IEC 9899:1999 (``ISO C99'') nor IEEE Std 1003.1-2001
(``POSIX.1'') requires time() to set errno on failure; thus, it is impos-
sible for an application to distinguish the valid time value -1 (repre-
senting the last UTC second of 1969) from the error return value.
Systems conforming to earlier versions of the C and POSIX standards
(including older versions of FreeBSD) did not set *tloc in the error
case.
HISTORY
A time() function appeared in Version 6 AT&T UNIX.
BSD July 18, 2003 BSD
Mac OS X 10.6 - Generated Thu Sep 17 20:23:23 CDT 2009