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STRPTIME(3) Linux Programmer's Manual STRPTIME(3)
strptime - convert a string representation of time to a time tm structure
#define _XOPEN_SOURCE /* See feature_test_macros(7) */
#include <time.h>
char *strptime(const char *s, const char *format, struct tm *tm);
The strptime() function is the converse function to strftime(3) and converts
the character string pointed to by s to values which are stored in the tm
structure pointed to by tm, using the format specified by format. Here format
is a character string that consists of field descriptors and text characters,
reminiscent of scanf(3). Each field descriptor consists of a % character
followed by another character that specifies the replacement for the field
descriptor. All other characters in the format string must have a matching
character in the input string, except for whitespace, which matches zero or
more whitespace characters in the input string. There should be whitespace or
other alphanumeric characters between any two field descriptors.
The strptime() function processes the input string from left to right. Each
of the three possible input elements (whitespace, literal, or format) are
handled one after the other. If the input cannot be matched to the format
string the function stops. The remainder of the format and input strings are
not processed.
The supported input field descriptors are listed below. In case a text string
(such as a weekday or month name) is to be matched, the comparison is case
insensitive. In case a number is to be matched, leading zeros are permitted
but not required.
%% The % character.
%a or %A
The weekday name according to the current locale, in abbreviated form
or the full name.
%b or %B or %h
The month name according to the current locale, in abbreviated form or
the full name.
%c The date and time representation for the current locale.
%C The century number (0-99).
%d or %e
The day of month (1-31).
%D Equivalent to %m/%d/%y. (This is the American style date, very
confusing to non-Americans, especially since %d/%m/%y is widely used in
Europe. The ISO 8601 standard format is %Y-%m-%d.)
%H The hour (0-23).
%I The hour on a 12-hour clock (1-12).
%j The day number in the year (1-366).
%m The month number (1-12).
%M The minute (0-59).
%n Arbitrary whitespace.
%p The locale's equivalent of AM or PM. (Note: there may be none.)
%r The 12-hour clock time (using the locale's AM or PM). In the POSIX
locale equivalent to %I:%M:%S %p. If t_fmt_ampm is empty in the
LC_TIME part of the current locale then the behavior is undefined.
%R Equivalent to %H:%M.
%S The second (0-60; 60 may occur for leap seconds; earlier also 61 was
allowed).
%t Arbitrary whitespace.
%T Equivalent to %H:%M:%S.
%U The week number with Sunday the first day of the week (0-53). The
first Sunday of January is the first day of week 1.
%w The weekday number (0-6) with Sunday = 0.
%W The week number with Monday the first day of the week (0-53). The
first Monday of January is the first day of week 1.
%x The date, using the locale's date format.
%X The time, using the locale's time format.
%y The year within century (0-99). When a century is not otherwise
specified, values in the range 69-99 refer to years in the twentieth
century (1969-1999); values in the range 00-68 refer to years in the
twenty-first century (2000-2068).
%Y The year, including century (for example, 1991).
Some field descriptors can be modified by the E or O modifier characters to
indicate that an alternative format or specification should be used. If the
alternative format or specification does not exist in the current locale, the
unmodified field descriptor is used.
The E modifier specifies that the input string may contain alternative locale-
dependent versions of the date and time representation:
%Ec The locale's alternative date and time representation.
%EC The name of the base year (period) in the locale's alternative
representation.
%Ex The locale's alternative date representation.
%EX The locale's alternative time representation.
%Ey The offset from %EC (year only) in the locale's alternative
representation.
%EY The full alternative year representation.
The O modifier specifies that the numerical input may be in an alternative
locale-dependent format:
%Od or %Oe
The day of the month using the locale's alternative numeric symbols;
leading zeros are permitted but not required.
%OH The hour (24-hour clock) using the locale's alternative numeric
symbols.
%OI The hour (12-hour clock) using the locale's alternative numeric
symbols.
%Om The month using the locale's alternative numeric symbols.
%OM The minutes using the locale's alternative numeric symbols.
%OS The seconds using the locale's alternative numeric symbols.
%OU The week number of the year (Sunday as the first day of the week) using
the locale's alternative numeric symbols.
%Ow The number of the weekday (Sunday=0) using the locale's alternative
numeric symbols.
%OW The week number of the year (Monday as the first day of the week) using
the locale's alternative numeric symbols.
%Oy The year (offset from %C) using the locale's alternative numeric
symbols.
The broken-down time structure tm is defined in <time.h> as follows:
struct tm {
int tm_sec; /* seconds */
int tm_min; /* minutes */
int tm_hour; /* hours */
int tm_mday; /* day of the month */
int tm_mon; /* month */
int tm_year; /* year */
int tm_wday; /* day of the week */
int tm_yday; /* day in the year */
int tm_isdst; /* daylight saving time */
};
The return value of the function is a pointer to the first character not
processed in this function call. In case the input string contains more
characters than required by the format string the return value points right
after the last consumed input character. In case the whole input string is
consumed the return value points to the null byte at the end of the string.
If strptime() fails to match all of the format string and therefore an error
occurred the function returns NULL.
SUSv2, POSIX.1-2001.
In principle, this function does not initialize tm but only stores the values
specified. This means that tm should be initialized before the call. Details
differ a bit between different UNIX systems. The glibc implementation does
not touch those fields which are not explicitly specified, except that it
recomputes the tm_wday and tm_yday field if any of the year, month, or day
elements changed.
This function is available since libc 4.6.8. Linux libc4 and libc5 includes
define the prototype unconditionally; glibc2 includes provide a prototype only
when _XOPEN_SOURCE or _GNU_SOURCE are defined.
Before libc 5.4.13 whitespace (and the 'n' and 't' specifications) was not
handled, no 'E' and 'O' locale modifier characters were accepted, and the 'C'
specification was a synonym for the 'c' specification.
The 'y' (year in century) specification is taken to specify a year in the 20th
century by libc4 and libc5. It is taken to be a year in the range 1950-2049
by glibc 2.0. It is taken to be a year in 1969-2068 since glibc 2.1.
For reasons of symmetry, glibc tries to support for strptime() the same format
characters as for strftime(3). (In most cases the corresponding fields are
parsed, but no field in tm is changed.) This leads to
%F Equivalent to %Y-%m-%d, the ISO 8601 date format.
%g The year corresponding to the ISO week number, but without the century
(0-99).
%G The year corresponding to the ISO week number. (For example, 1991.)
%u The day of the week as a decimal number (1-7, where Monday = 1).
%V The ISO 8601:1988 week number as a decimal number (1-53). If the week
(starting on Monday) containing 1 January has four or more days in the
new year, then it is considered week 1. Otherwise, it is the last week
of the previous year, and the next week is week 1.
%z An RFC-822/ISO 8601 standard timezone specification.
%Z The timezone name.
Similarly, because of GNU extensions to strftime(3), %k is accepted as a
synonym for %H, and %l should be accepted as a synonym for %I, and %P is
accepted as a synonym for %p. Finally
%s The number of seconds since the Epoch, 1970-01-01 00:00:00 +0000 (UTC).
Leap seconds are not counted unless leap second support is available.
The glibc implementation does not require whitespace between two field
descriptors.
The following example demonstrates the use of strptime() and strftime(3).
#define _XOPEN_SOURCE
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <string.h>
#include <time.h>
int
main(void)
{
struct tm tm;
char buf[255];
memset(&tm, 0, sizeof(struct tm));
strptime("2001-11-12 18:31:01", "%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S", &tm);
strftime(buf, sizeof(buf), "%d %b %Y %H:%M", &tm);
puts(buf);
exit(EXIT_SUCCESS);
}
time(2), getdate(3), scanf(3), setlocale(3), strftime(3)
This page is part of release 3.32 of the Linux man-pages project. A
description of the project, and information about reporting bugs, can be found
at http://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/.
GNU 2009-12-05 STRPTIME(3)
HTML rendering created 2010-12-03 by Michael Kerrisk, author of The Linux Programming Interface