Impara Getting and Printing Current Time | Working with C-style Time

When you need to display the current date and time in a way that people can easily read, C-style functions from the <ctime> library offer simple tools. These functions allow you to take the current system time and convert it into a human-readable string. You will see how to retrieve the current time, then use standard C-style functions to print it in a familiar format.

print_current_time_ctime.cpp


              1234567891011121314
            
#include <iostream>
#include <ctime>

int main()
{
    // Get the current time as a time_t value
    std::time_t currentTime = std::time(nullptr);

    // Convert to a human-readable string using ctime()
    char* timeString = std::ctime(&currentTime);

    // Print the result
    std::cout << "Current time (ctime): " << timeString;
}

The function ctime() takes a pointer to a time_t value and returns a C-style string that represents the local time in a readable format. The output from ctime() usually looks like "Wed Jun 12 14:23:45 2024\n", showing the day of the week, month, day, time, and year. This makes it easy to print the current date and time directly to the console.

print_current_time_asctime.cpp


              1234567891011121314151617
            
#include <iostream>
#include <ctime>

int main()
{
    // Get the current time as a time_t value
    std::time_t currentTime = std::time(nullptr);

    // Convert to local time (struct tm)
    std::tm* localTime = std::localtime(&currentTime);

    // Convert struct tm to a readable string using asctime()
    char* timeString = std::asctime(localTime);

    // Print the result
    std::cout << "Current time (asctime): " << timeString;
}

The asctime() function takes a pointer to a struct tm (which holds the broken-down time, such as year, month, day, hour, minute, and second) and returns a string formatted in the same style as ctime(). This function is useful when you want to manipulate or inspect the parts of the current time before displaying it.

Note

Both ctime() and asctime() return pointers to static buffers. This means that their results may be overwritten by subsequent calls to these functions. If you need to keep the string for later use, you should copy it to your own buffer.

Tutto è chiaro?

Grazie per i tuoi commenti!

Sezione 1. Capitolo 3

Chieda ad AI

Chieda pure quello che desidera o provi una delle domande suggerite per iniziare la nostra conversazione

Suggested prompts:

Can you show me an example of how to use `ctime()` in code?

What is the difference between `ctime()` and `asctime()`?

How do I get the current time as a `struct tm`?

Scorri per mostrare il menu