1 .\" Copyright 2001 walter harms (walter.harms@informatik.uni-oldenburg.de)
2 .\" and Copyright 2008, Linux Foundation, written by Michael Kerrisk
3 .\" <mtk.manpages@gmail.com>
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6 .\" manual provided the copyright notice and this permission notice are
7 .\" preserved on all copies.
9 .\" Permission is granted to copy and distribute modified versions of this
10 .\" manual under the conditions for verbatim copying, provided that the
11 .\" entire resulting derived work is distributed under the terms of a
12 .\" permission notice identical to this one.
14 .\" Since the Linux kernel and libraries are constantly changing, this
15 .\" manual page may be incorrect or out-of-date. The author(s) assume no
16 .\" responsibility for errors or omissions, or for damages resulting from
17 .\" the use of the information contained herein. The author(s) may not
18 .\" have taken the same level of care in the production of this manual,
19 .\" which is licensed free of charge, as they might when working
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23 .\" the source, must acknowledge the copyright and authors of this work.
25 .\" Modified, 2001-12-26, aeb
26 .\" 2008-09-07, mtk, Various rewrites; added an example program.
28 .TH GETDATE 3 2010-09-20 "" "Linux Programmer's Manual"
30 getdate, getdate_r \- convert a date-plus-time string to broken-down time
32 .B "#include <time.h>"
34 .BI "struct tm *getdate(const char *" string );
36 .B "extern int getdate_err;"
38 .B "#include <time.h>"
40 .BI "int getdate_r(const char *" string ", struct tm *" res );
43 Feature Test Macro Requirements for glibc (see
44 .BR feature_test_macros (7)):
50 _XOPEN_SOURCE\ >=\ 500 ||
51 _XOPEN_SOURCE\ &&\ _XOPEN_SOURCE_EXTENDED
63 converts a string representation of a date and time,
64 contained in the buffer pointed to by
66 into a broken-down time.
67 The broken-down time is stored in a
69 structure, and a pointer to this
70 structure is returned as the function result.
73 structure is allocated in static storage,
74 and consequently it will be overwritten by further calls to
83 uses the formats found in the file
84 whose full pathname is given in the environment variable
86 The first line in the file that matches the given input string
87 is used for the conversion.
89 The matching is done case insensitively.
90 Superfluous whitespace, either in the pattern or in the string to
91 be converted, is ignored.
93 The conversion specifications that a pattern can contain are those given for
95 One more conversion specification is specified in POSIX.1-2001:
99 This is not implemented in glibc.
103 is given, the structure containing the broken-down time
104 is initialized with values corresponding to the current
105 time in the given timezone.
106 Otherwise, the structure is initialized to the broken-down time
107 corresponding to the current local time (as by a call to
110 When only the weekday is given, the day is taken to be the first such day
113 When only the month is given (and no year), the month is taken to
114 be the first such month equal to or after the current month.
115 If no day is given, it is the first day of the month.
117 When no hour, minute and second are given, the current
118 hour, minute and second are taken.
120 If no date is given, but we know the hour, then that hour is taken
121 to be the first such hour equal to or after the current hour.
124 is a GNU extension that provides a reentrant version of
126 Rather than using a global variable to report errors and a static buffer
127 to return the broken down time,
128 it returns errors via the function result value,
129 and returns the resulting broken-down time in the
130 caller-allocated buffer pointed to by the argument
135 returns a pointer to a
137 Otherwise, it returns NULL and sets the global variable
139 to one of the error numbers shown below.
147 on error it returns one of the error numbers shown below.
149 The following errors are returned via
153 or as the function result (for
159 environment variable is not defined, or its value is an empty string.
162 The template file specified by
164 cannot be opened for reading.
167 Failed to get file status information.
171 The template file is not a regular file.
174 An error was encountered while reading the template file.
177 Memory allocation failed (not enough memory available).
178 .\" Error 6 doesn't seem to occur in glibc
181 There is no line in the file that matches the input.
184 Invalid input specification.
188 File containing format patterns.
196 The POSIX.1-2001 specification for
198 contains conversion specifications using the
202 modifier, while such specifications are not given for
208 so that precisely the same conversions are supported by both.
210 The program below calls
212 for each of its command-line arguments,
213 and for each call displays the values in the fields of the returned
216 The following shell session demonstrates the operation of the program:
220 .RB "$" " TFILE=$PWD/tfile"
221 .RB "$" " echo \(aq%A\(aq > $TFILE " " # Full weekday name"
222 .RB "$" " echo \(aq%T\(aq >> $TFILE" " # ISO date (YYYY-MM-DD)"
223 .RB "$" " echo \(aq%F\(aq >> $TFILE" " # Time (HH:MM:SS)"
225 .RB "$" " export DATEMSK=$TFILE"
226 .RB "$" " ./a.out Tuesday \(aq2009-12-28\(aq \(aq12:22:33\(aq"
227 Sun Sep 7 06:03:36 CEST 2008
228 Call 1 ("Tuesday") succeeded:
238 Call 2 ("2009-12-28") succeeded:
248 Call 3 ("12:22:33") succeeded:
263 #define _GNU_SOURCE 500
269 main(int argc, char *argv[])
274 for (j = 1; j < argc; j++) {
275 tmp = getdate(argv[j]);
278 printf("Call %d failed; getdate_err = %d\\n",
283 printf("Call %d (\\"%s\\") succeeded:\\n", j, argv[j]);
284 printf(" tm_sec = %d\\n", tmp\->tm_sec);
285 printf(" tm_min = %d\\n", tmp\->tm_min);
286 printf(" tm_hour = %d\\n", tmp\->tm_hour);
287 printf(" tm_mday = %d\\n", tmp\->tm_mday);
288 printf(" tm_mon = %d\\n", tmp\->tm_mon);
289 printf(" tm_year = %d\\n", tmp\->tm_year);
290 printf(" tm_wday = %d\\n", tmp\->tm_wday);
291 printf(" tm_yday = %d\\n", tmp\->tm_yday);
292 printf(" tm_isdst = %d\\n", tmp\->tm_isdst);