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STRFTIME(3) Linux Programmer’s Manual STRFTIME(3)
NAME
strftime - format date and time
SYNOPSIS
#include <time.h>
size_t strftime(char *s, size_t max, const char *format,
const struct tm *tm);
DESCRIPTION
The strftime() function formats the broken-down time tm according to
the format specification format and places the result in the character
array s of size max.
Ordinary characters placed in the format string are copied to s without
conversion. Conversion specifications are introduced by a ‘%’ charac‐
ter, and terminated by a conversion specifier character, and are
replaced in s as follows:
%a The abbreviated weekday name according to the current locale.
%A The full weekday name according to the current locale.
%b The abbreviated month name according to the current locale.
%B The full month name according to the current locale.
%c The preferred date and time representation for the current
locale.
%C The century number (year/100) as a 2-digit integer. (SU)
%d The day of the month as a decimal number (range 01 to 31).
%D Equivalent to %m/%d/%y. (Yecch — for Americans only. Americans
should note that in other countries %d/%m/%y is rather common.
This means that in international context this format is ambigu‐
ous and should not be used.) (SU)
%e Like %d, the day of the month as a decimal number, but a leading
zero is replaced by a space. (SU)
%E Modifier: use alternative format, see below. (SU)
%F Equivalent to %Y-%m-%d (the ISO 8601 date format). (C99)
%G The ISO 8601 year with century as a decimal number. The 4-digit
year corresponding to the ISO week number (see %V). This has
the same format and value as %y, except that if the ISO week
number belongs to the previous or next year, that year is used
instead. (TZ)
%g Like %G, but without century, i.e., with a 2-digit year (00-99).
(TZ)
%h Equivalent to %b. (SU)
%H The hour as a decimal number using a 24-hour clock (range 00 to
23).
%I The hour as a decimal number using a 12-hour clock (range 01 to
12).
%j The day of the year as a decimal number (range 001 to 366).
%k The hour (24-hour clock) as a decimal number (range 0 to 23);
single digits are preceded by a blank. (See also %H.) (TZ)
%l The hour (12-hour clock) as a decimal number (range 1 to 12);
single digits are preceded by a blank. (See also %I.) (TZ)
%m The month as a decimal number (range 01 to 12).
%M The minute as a decimal number (range 00 to 59).
%n A newline character. (SU)
%O Modifier: use alternative format, see below. (SU)
%p Either ‘AM’ or ‘PM’ according to the given time value, or the
corresponding strings for the current locale. Noon is treated
as ‘pm’ and midnight as ‘am’.
%P Like %p but in lowercase: ‘am’ or ‘pm’ or a corresponding string
for the current locale. (GNU)
%r The time in a.m. or p.m. notation. In the POSIX locale this is
equivalent to ‘%I:%M:%S %p’. (SU)
%R The time in 24-hour notation (%H:%M). (SU) For a version includ‐
ing the seconds, see %T below.
%s The number of seconds since the Epoch, i.e., since 1970-01-01
00:00:00 UTC. (TZ)
%S The second as a decimal number (range 00 to 60). (The range is
up to 60 to allow for occasional leap seconds.)
%t A tab character. (SU)
%T The time in 24-hour notation (%H:%M:%S). (SU)
%u The day of the week as a decimal, range 1 to 7, Monday being 1.
See also %w. (SU)
%U The week number of the current year as a decimal number, range
00 to 53, starting with the first Sunday as the first day of
week 01. See also %V and %W.
%V The ISO 8601:1988 week number of the current year as a decimal
number, range 01 to 53, where week 1 is the first week that has
at least 4 days in the current year, and with Monday as the
first day of the week. See also %U and %W. (SU)
%w The day of the week as a decimal, range 0 to 6, Sunday being 0.
See also %u.
%W The week number of the current year as a decimal number, range
00 to 53, starting with the first Monday as the first day of
week 01.
%x The preferred date representation for the current locale without
the time.
%X The preferred time representation for the current locale without
the date.
%y The year as a decimal number without a century (range 00 to 99).
%Y The year as a decimal number including the century.
%z The time-zone as hour offset from GMT. Required to emit
RFC 822-conformant dates (using "%a, %d %b %Y %H:%M:%S %z").
(GNU)
%Z The time zone or name or abbreviation.
%+ The date and time in date(1) format. (TZ) (Not supported in
glibc2.)
%% A literal ‘%’ character.
Some conversion specifications can be modified by preceding the conver‐
sion specifier character by the E or O modifier to indicate that an
alternative format should be used. If the alternative format or speci‐
fication does not exist for the current locale, the behaviour will be
as if the unmodified conversion specification were used. (SU) The Sin‐
gle Unix Specification mentions %Ec, %EC, %Ex, %EX, %Ey, %EY, %Od, %Oe,
%OH, %OI, %Om, %OM, %OS, %Ou, %OU, %OV, %Ow, %OW, %Oy, where the effect
of the O modifier is to use alternative numeric symbols (say, roman
numerals), and that of the E modifier is to use a locale-dependent
alternative representation.
The broken-down time structure tm is defined in <time.h>. See also
ctime(3).
RETURN VALUE
The strftime() function returns the number of characters placed in the
array s, not including the terminating null byte, provided the string,
including the terminating null byte, fits. Otherwise, it returns 0,
and the contents of the array is undefined. (Thus at least since libc
4.4.4; very old versions of libc, such as libc 4.4.1, would return max
if the array was too small.)
Note that the return value 0 does not necessarily indicate an error;
for example, in many locales %p yields an empty string.
ENVIRONMENT
The environment variables TZ and LC_TIME are used.
CONFORMING TO
SVr4, C89, C99. There are strict inclusions between the set of conver‐
sions given in ANSI C (unmarked), those given in the Single Unix Speci‐
fication (marked SU), those given in Olson’s timezone package (marked
TZ), and those given in glibc (marked GNU), except that %+ is not sup‐
ported in glibc2. On the other hand glibc2 has several more extensions.
POSIX.1 only refers to ANSI C; POSIX.2 describes under date(1) several
extensions that could apply to strftime() as well. The %F conversion
is in C99 and POSIX.1-2001.
In SUSv2, the %S specified allowed a range of 00 to 61, to allow for
the theoretical possibility of a minute that included a double leap
second (there never has been such a minute).
GLIBC NOTES
Glibc provides some extensions for conversion specifications. (These
extensions are not specified in POSIX.1-2001, but a few other systems
provide similar features.) Between the % character and the conversion
specifier character, an optional flag and field width may be specified.
(These precede the E or O modifiers, if present.)
The following flag characters are permitted:
_ (underscore) Pad a numeric result string with spaces.
- (dash) Do not pad a numeric result string.
0 Pad a numeric result string with zeros even if the conversion
specifier character uses space-padding by default.
^ Convert alphabetic characters in result string to upper case.
# Swap the case of the result string. (This flag only works with
certain conversion specifier characters, and of these, it is
only really useful with %Z).
An optional decimal width specifier may follow the (possibly absent)
flag. If the natural size of the field is smaller than this width,
then the result string is padded (on the left) to the specified width.
BUGS
Some buggy versions of gcc complain about the use of %c: warning: ‘%c’
yields only last 2 digits of year in some locales. Of course program‐
mers are encouraged to use %c, it gives the preferred date and time
representation. One meets all kinds of strange obfuscations to circum‐
vent this gcc problem. A relatively clean one is to add an intermediate
function
size_t my_strftime(char *s, size_t max, const char *fmt, const
struct tm *tm) {
return strftime(s, max, fmt, tm);
}
EXAMPLE
The program below can be used to experiment with strftime().
#include <time.h>
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
int
main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
char outstr[200];
time_t t;
struct tm *tmp;
t = time(NULL);
tmp = localtime(&t);
if (tmp == NULL) {
perror("localtime");
exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
}
if (strftime(outstr, sizeof(outstr), argv[1], tmp) == 0) {
fprintf(stderr, "strftime returned 0");
exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
}
printf("Result string is \"%s\"\n", outstr);
exit(EXIT_SUCCESS);
} /* main */
Some examples of the result string produced by the glibc implementation
of strftime() are as follows:
$ ./a.out "%m"
Result string is "11"
$ ./a.out "%5m"
Result string is "00011"
$ ./a.out "%_5m"
Result string is " 11"
SEE ALSO
date(1), time(2), ctime(3), setlocale(3), sprintf(3), strptime(3)
GNU 2005-11-23 STRFTIME(3)