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



NAME
       time - get time in seconds

SYNOPSIS
       #include <time.h>

       time_t time(time_t *tloc);

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

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

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 tloc points outside  your	 accessible  address  space  (but  see
	      BUGS).

	      On  systems  where the C library time() wrapper function invokes
	      an implementation provided by the vdso(7) (so that there	is  no
	      trap  into the kernel), an invalid address may instead trigger a
	      SIGSEGV signal.

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 approxi-
       mates 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  synchro-
       nized  to  a standard reference.	 The intention is that the interpreta-
       tion of seconds since the Epoch values be consistent; see  POSIX.1-2008
       Rationale A.4.15 for further rationale.

       On Linux, a call to time() with tloc specified as NULL cannot fail with
       the error EOVERFLOW, even on ABIs where time_t is a signed 32-bit inte-
       ger  and	 the clock ticks past the time 2**31 (2038-01-19 03:14:08 UTC,
       ignoring leap seconds).	(POSIX.1 permits, but does  not	 require,  the
       EOVERFLOW  error in the case where the seconds since the Epoch will not
       fit in time_t.)	Instead, the behavior on Linux is undefined  when  the
       system  time  is out of the time_t range.  Applications intended to run
       after 2038 should use ABIs with time_t wider than 32 bits.

BUGS
       Error returns from this system call are indistinguishable from success-
       ful  reports  that the time is a few seconds before the Epoch, so the C
       library wrapper function never sets errno as a result of this call.

       The tloc argument is obsolescent and should always be NULL in new code.
       When tloc is NULL, the call cannot fail.

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

COLOPHON
       This  page  is  part of release 4.10 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
       https://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/.



Linux				  2015-12-28			       TIME(2)