FTIME

Section: Linux Programmer's Manual (3)
Updated: 2009-03-15
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NAME

ftime - return date and time

SYNOPSIS

#include <sys/timeb.h>

int ftime(struct timeb *tp);

DESCRIPTION

This function returns the current time, in seconds and milliseconds since the Epoch (00:00:00 UTC, 1 January 1970). The time is returned in tp, which is declared as follows:

struct timeb {
    time_t         time;
    unsigned short millitm;
    short          timezone;
    short          dstflag;
};

Here time is the number of seconds since the Epoch, and millitm is the number of milliseconds since time seconds since the Epoch. The timezone field is the local timezone measured in minutes of time west of Greenwich (with a negative value indicating minutes east of Greenwich). The dstflag field is a flag that, if non-zero, indicates that Daylight Saving time applies locally during the appropriate part of the year.

POSIX.1-2001 says that the contents of the timezone and dstflag fields are unspecified; avoid relying on them.

RETURN VALUE

This function always returns 0. (POSIX.1-2001 specifies, and some systems document, a -1 error return.)

CONFORMING TO

4.2BSD, POSIX.1-2001. POSIX.1-2008 removes the specification of ftime().

This function is obsolete. Don't use it. If the time in seconds suffices, time(2) can be used; gettimeofday(2) gives microseconds; clock_gettime(2) gives nanoseconds but is not as widely available.

BUGS

Under libc4 and libc5 the millitm field is meaningful. But early glibc2 is buggy and returns 0 there; glibc 2.1.1 is correct again.

COLOPHON

This page is part of release 3.22 of the Linux man-pages project. A description of the project, and information about reporting bugs, can be found at http://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/.