FreeBSD Manual Pages
GETTIMEOFDAY(2) System Calls Manual 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: The gettimeofday function (but not settimeofday) is obsolescent. See the "STANDARDS" section for more details. 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 mi- croseconds 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". 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 { time_t tv_sec; /* seconds */ suseconds_t 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 min- utes of time westward from Greenwich), and a flag that, if nonzero, in- dicates that Daylight Saving time applies locally during the appropri- ate part of the year. The kernel generally does not track these values and they are usually returned as zero. Use localtime(3) to find the offset for the currently active timezone. Only the super-user may set the time of day or time zone. If the sys- tem 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 re- striction using the adjtime(2) system call even when the system is se- cure. 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. ERRORS The following error codes may be set in errno: [EINVAL] The supplied timeval value is invalid. [EPERM] A user other than the super-user attempted to set the time. SEE ALSO date(1), adjtime(2), clock_gettime(2), ctime(3), timeradd(3), clocks(7) STANDARDS The gettimeofday function is considered obsolescent and its usage dis- couraged by IEEE Std 1003.1-2008, 2017 Edition (POSIX.1). Applications should use the clock_gettime(2) function instead. HISTORY The gettimeofday() system call appeared in 4.2BSD. FreeBSD 13.2 April 28, 2024 GETTIMEOFDAY(2)
NAME | LIBRARY | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | RETURN VALUES | ERRORS | SEE ALSO | STANDARDS | HISTORY
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