Man Linux: Main Page and Category List

NAME

       ftime - return date and time

SYNOPSIS

       #include <sys/timeb.h>

       int ftime(struct timeb *tp);

DESCRIPTION

       This  function  returns  the  current  time as seconds and milliseconds
       since the Epoch, 1970-01-01 00:00:00 +0000 (UTC).  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 nonzero, 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       This function is obsolete.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.

SEE ALSO

       gettimeofday(2), time(2)

COLOPHON

       This  page  is  part of release 3.24 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/.