HP C/iX Library Reference Manual (30026-90004)

130 Chapter5

HP C/iX Library Function Descriptions

ctime

Converts the current time into a 26-character ASCII string of the form

Fri May 11 09:53:03 1984\n\0

where \n is a newline character and \0 is a terminating null character.

Syntax

#include <time.h>

char *ctime(const time_t *

timer

);

Parameters

timer

A pointer to the time to be converted.

Return Value

x A pointer to a 26-byte character string containing the converted time.

Description

The ctime function converts a Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) value (a value

representing the number of elapsed seconds since 00:00:00 UTC January 1, 1970) into a

character string. The returned 26 character time value is adjusted to the time zone

speciﬁed by the TZ (Time Zone) environment variable.

By default, ctime adjusts the returned value to the Eastern Standard Time (EST) zone.

You may override this default behavior by using the MPE/iX command SETVAR TZ

name

Time zone names, and the format of TZTAB.LIB.SYS ﬁle containing time zone offsets from

GMT are listed in appendix A, "Time Zones."

Example

Using time and ctime, you can write a simple date command:

#include <stdio.h>

#include <time.h>

main()

{

char *str, *ctime();

time_t time(), nseconds;

nseconds = time(NULL);

str = ctime(&nseconds);

printf("%s\n", str);

}