1.\" Copyright (c) 1989, 1991, 1993 2.\" The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved. 3.\" 4.\" This code is derived from software contributed to Berkeley by 5.\" the American National Standards Committee X3, on Information 6.\" Processing Systems. 7.\" 8.\" Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without 9.\" modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions 10.\" are met: 11.\" 1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright 12.\" notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer. 13.\" 2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright 14.\" notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the 15.\" documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution. 16.\" 4. Neither the name of the University nor the names of its contributors 17.\" may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software 18.\" without specific prior written permission. 19.\" 20.\" THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE REGENTS AND CONTRIBUTORS ``AS IS'' AND 21.\" ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE 22.\" IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE 23.\" ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE REGENTS OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE 24.\" FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL 25.\" DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS 26.\" OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) 27.\" HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT 28.\" LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY 29.\" OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF 30.\" SUCH DAMAGE. 31.\" 32.\" @(#)time.3 8.1 (Berkeley) 6/4/93 33.\" $FreeBSD$ 34.\" 35.Dd July 18, 2003 36.Dt TIME 3 37.Os 38.Sh NAME 39.Nm time 40.Nd get time of day 41.Sh LIBRARY 42.Lb libc 43.Sh SYNOPSIS 44.In time.h 45.Ft time_t 46.Fn time "time_t *tloc" 47.Sh DESCRIPTION 48The 49.Fn time 50function 51returns the value of time in seconds since 0 hours, 0 minutes, 520 seconds, January 1, 1970, Coordinated Universal Time. 53If an error occurs, 54.Fn time 55returns the value 56.Po Vt time_t Pc Ns \-1 . 57.Pp 58The return value is also stored in 59.No \&* Ns Va tloc , 60provided that 61.Va tloc 62is non-null. 63.Sh ERRORS 64The 65.Fn time 66function may fail for any of the reasons described in 67.Xr gettimeofday 2 . 68.Sh SEE ALSO 69.Xr gettimeofday 2 , 70.Xr ctime 3 71.Sh STANDARDS 72The 73.Nm 74function conforms to 75.St -p1003.1-2001 . 76.Sh HISTORY 77A 78.Fn time 79function appeared in 80.At v6 . 81.Sh BUGS 82Neither 83.St -isoC-99 84nor 85.St -p1003.1-2001 86requires 87.Fn time 88to set 89.Va errno 90on failure; thus, it is impossible for an application to distinguish 91the valid time value \-1 (representing the last UTC second of 1969) 92from the error return value. 93.Pp 94Systems conforming to earlier versions of the C and 95.Tn POSIX 96standards (including older versions of 97.Fx ) 98did not set 99.No \&* Ns Va tloc 100in the error case. 101