TIME(2)                             Linux Programmer's Manual                             TIME(2)



NAME
       time - get time in seconds

SYNOPSIS
       #include <time.h>

       time_t time(time_t *t);

DESCRIPTION
       time()  returns  the  time  as  the number of seconds since the Epoch, 1970-01-01 00:00:00
       +0000 (UTC).

       If t is non-NULL, the return value is also stored in the memory pointed to by t.

RETURN VALUE
       On success, the value of  time  in  seconds  since  the  Epoch  is  returned.   On  error,
       ((time_t) -1) is returned, and errno is set appropriately.

ERRORS
       EFAULT t points outside your accessible address space.

CONFORMING TO
       SVr4, 4.3BSD, C89, C99, POSIX.1-2001.  POSIX does not specify any error conditions.

NOTES
       POSIX.1  defines  seconds  since the Epoch using a formula that approximates the number of
       seconds between a specified time and the Epoch.  This formula takes account of  the  facts
       that  all  years  that are evenly divisible by 4 are leap years, but years that are evenly
       divisible by 100 are not leap years unless they are also evenly divisible by 400, in which
       case  they  are  leap  years.   This value is not the same as the actual number of seconds
       between the time and the Epoch, because of leap seconds and because system clocks are  not
       required  to be synchronized to a standard reference.  The intention is that the interpre‐
       tation of seconds since the Epoch values be consistent; see POSIX.1-2008 Rationale  A.4.15
       for further rationale.

SEE ALSO
       date(1), gettimeofday(2), ctime(3), ftime(3), time(7)

COLOPHON
       This  page  is  part of release 3.74 of the Linux man-pages project.  A description of the
       project, information about reporting bugs, and the latest version of  this  page,  can  be
       found at http://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/.



Linux                                       2011-09-09                                    TIME(2)