FreeBSD Man Pages

gettimeofday(2)

NAME

     gettimeofday, settimeofday -- get/set date and time

LIBRARY

     Standard C Library (libc, -lc)

SYNOPSIS

     #include <sys/time.h>

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

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

DESCRIPTION

     Note: timezone is no longer used; this information is kept outside the
     kernel.

     The system's notion of the current Greenwich time and the current time
     zone is obtained with the gettimeofday() system call, and set with the
     settimeofday() system 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 con-
     tinuously or in ``ticks''.  If tp or tzp is NULL, the associated time
     information will not be returned or set.

     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; /* minutes west of Greenwich */
	     int     tz_dsttime;     /* type of dst correction */
     };

     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.

     Only the super-user may set the time of day or time zone.	If the system
     is running at securelevel >= 2 (see init(8)), the time may only be
     advanced or retarded by a maximum of one second.  This limitation is
     imposed to prevent a malicious super-user from setting arbitrary time
     stamps on files.  The system time can be adjusted backwards without
     restriction using the adjtime(2) system call even when the system is
     secure.

RETURN VALUES

     Upon successful completion, the value 0 is returned; otherwise the
     value -1 is returned and the global variable errno is set to indicate the
     error.

SEE ALSO

     date(1), adjtime(2), clock_gettime(2), ctime(3), timeradd(3), clocks(7),
     timed(8)

HISTORY

     The gettimeofday() system call appeared in 4.2BSD.

FreeBSD 5.4			 May 26, 1995			   FreeBSD 5.4

SPONSORED LINKS