Modern C for Absolute Beginners: A Friendly Introduction to the C Programming Language

© Slobodan Dmitrović 2021

S. DmitrovićModern C for Absolute Beginnershttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4842-6643-4_49

Time and Date

Slobodan Dmitrović¹  

(1)

Belgrade, Serbia

 

The <time.h> header declares functions that allow us to work with date/time. In this appendix, we explain how to obtain and format the current time and date.

The time function is declared inside the <time.h> header and returns the current date-time (date-time since epoch) as an object of type time_t. The function has the following signature:

timet_ time(time_t *arg);

The type time_t is a type capable of storing times. The time function can return the calendar time when arg is NULL:

#include <stdio.h>

#include <time.h>

int main(void)

{

      time_t mytime = time(NULL);

      printf("Obtained ...