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# ctime

From cppreference.com
< c‎ | chrono

Defined in header `<time.h>` |  |
char* ctime( const time_t* time ); |  |

Converts given time since epoch to a calendar local time and then to a textual representation, as if by calling asctime(localtime(time)). The resulting string has the following format:

    Www Mmm dd hh:mm:ss yyyy\n

- `Www` - the day of the week (one of `Mon`, `Tue`, `Wed`, `Thu`, `Fri`, `Sat`, `Sun`).
- `Mmm` - the month (one of `Jan`, `Feb`, `Mar`, `Apr`, `May`, `Jun`, `Jul`, `Aug`, `Sep`, `Oct`, `Nov`, `Dec`).
- `dd` - the day of the month
- `hh` - hours
- `mm` - minutes
- `ss` - seconds
- `yyyy` - years

The function does not support localization.

### [edit] Parameters

time | - | pointer to a time_t object specifying the time to print

### [edit] Return value

pointer to a static null-terminated character string holding the textual representation of date and time. The string may be shared between `asctime` and ctime, and may be overwritten on each invocation of any of those functions.

### [edit] Notes

This function returns a pointer to static data and is not thread-safe. In addition, it modifies the static tm object which may be shared with gmtime and localtime. POSIX marks this function obsolete and recommends strftime instead.

The behavior may be undefined for the values of time_t that result in the string longer than 25 characters (e.g. year 10000)

### [edit] Example

Run this code

    #include <time.h>
    #include <stdio.h>

    int main(void)
    {
        time_t result = time(NULL);
        printf("%s", ctime(&result));
    }

Output:

    Wed Oct  9 10:33:09 2013

### [edit] See also

asctime | converts a `tm` object to a textual representation (function) [edit]
strftime | converts a `tm` object to custom textual representation (function) [edit]
C++ documentation for ctime

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