GETTIMEOFDAY

Section: System Calls (2)
Updated: May 14, 1986
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NAME

gettimeofday, settimeofday - get/set date and time

SYNOPSIS

#include <sys/time.h>

gettimeofday(tp, tzp)
struct timeval *tp;
struct timezone *tzp;

settimeofday(tp, tzp)
struct timeval *tp;
struct timezone *tzp;

DESCRIPTION

The system's notion of the current Greenwich time and the current time zone is obtained with the gettimeofday call, and set with the settimeofday call. The time is expressed in seconds and microseconds since midnight (0 hour), January 1, 1970. The resolution of the system clock is hardware dependent, and the time may be updated continuously or in ``ticks.''

The structures pointed to by tp and tzp are defined in <sys/time.h> as:


struct timeval {
        long    tv_sec;         /* seconds since Jan. 1, 1970 */
        long    tv_usec;                /* and microseconds */
};

struct timezone {
        int     tz_minuteswest; /* of Greenwich */
        int     tz_dsttime;     /* type of dst correction to apply */
};

The timezone structure indicates the local time zone (measured in minutes of time westward from Greenwich), and a flag that, if nonzero, indicates that Daylight Saving time applies locally during the appropriate part of the year. Note, however, that the tzp argument is ignored on the NeXT computer, which uses the /etc/tzone package instead.

Only the super-user may set the time of day.

RETURN

A 0 return value indicates that the call succeeded. A -1 return value indicates an error occurred, and in this case an error code is stored into the global variable errno.

ERRORS

The following error codes may be set in errno:

[EFAULT]: An argument address referenced invalid memory.
[EPERM]: A user other than the super-user attempted to set the time.

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