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time(3)

NAME

     time -- get time of day

LIBRARY

     Standard C Library (libc, -lc)

SYNOPSIS

     #include <time.h>

     time_t
     time(time_t *tloc);

DESCRIPTION

     The time() function returns the value of time in seconds since 0 hours, 0
     minutes, 0 seconds, January 1, 1970, Coordinated Universal Time.  If an
     error occurs, time() returns the value (time_t)-1.

     The return value is also stored in *tloc, provided that tloc is non-null.

ERRORS

     The time() function may fail for any of the reasons described in
     gettimeofday(2).

SEE ALSO

     gettimeofday(2), ctime(3)

STANDARDS

     The time function conforms to IEEE Std 1003.1-2001 (``POSIX.1'').

BUGS

     Neither ISO/IEC 9899:1999 (``ISO C99'') nor IEEE Std 1003.1-2001
     (``POSIX.1'') requires time() to set errno on failure; thus, it is impos-
     sible for an application to distinguish the valid time value -1 (repre-
     senting the last UTC second of 1969) from the error return value.

     Systems conforming to earlier versions of the C and POSIX standards
     (including older versions of FreeBSD) did not set *tloc in the error
     case.

HISTORY

     A time() function appeared in Version 6 AT&T UNIX.

FreeBSD 5.4			 July 18, 2003			   FreeBSD 5.4

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