ctime() Function in C/C++ (original) (raw)

Last Updated : 26 Jun, 2023

The ctime() function is define in the time.h header file. The ctime() function returns the string representing the localtime based on the argument timer.

**Syntax:

char *ctime(const time_t *timer)

**Parameters: This function accepts single parameter _time_ptr. It is used to set time_t object that contains a time value.

**Return Value: This function returns a string that contains the date and time which is in human readable form.

**Example:

Www Mmm dd hh:mm:ss yyyy

**Time Complexity: O(1)
**Auxiliary Space: O(1)

**Note: The description of results are given below:

• **Www: Day of week.
• **Mmm: Month name.
• **dd : Day of month.
• **hh : Hour digit.
• **mm : Minute digit.
• **ss : Second digit.
• **yyyy : Year digit.

**Example:

C++ `

#include #include

int main() { // create a time_t object representing 1 hour from now time_t one_hour_from_now = time(0) + 3600;

// convert one_hour_from_now to string form
char* dt = ctime(&one_hour_from_now);

// print the date and time
std::cout << "One hour from now, the date and time will be: " << dt << std::endl;

return 0;

}

C

// C program to demonstrate // ctime() function. #include <stdio.h> #include <time.h>

int main () { time_t curtime;

time(&curtime);

printf("Current time = %s", ctime(&curtime));

return(0);

}

`

**Output:

One hour from now, the date and time will be: Thu Apr 13 09:01:46 2023