STRPTIME(3) BSD Library Functions Manual STRPTIME(3)
NAME
strptime, strptime_l -- parse date and time string
LIBRARY
Standard C Library (libc, -lc)
SYNOPSIS
#include <time.h>
char *
strptime(const char *restrict buf, const char *restrict format, struct tm *restrict tm);
#include <time.h>
#include <xlocale.h>
char *
strptime_l(const char *restrict buf, const char *restrict format, struct tm *restrict tm,
locale_t loc);
DESCRIPTION
The strptime() function parses the string in the buffer buf, according to the string pointed to by
format, and fills in the elements of the structure pointed to by tm. The resulting values will be rel-ative relative
ative to the local time zone. Thus, it can be considered the reverse operation of strftime(3).
The format string consists of zero or more conversion specifications and ordinary characters. All
ordinary characters are matched exactly with the buffer, where white space in the format string will
match any amount of white space in the buffer. All conversion specifications are identical to those
described in strftime(3).
Two-digit year values, including formats %y and %D, are now interpreted as beginning at 1969 per POSIX
requirements. Years 69-00 are interpreted in the 20th century (1969-2000), years 01-68 in the 21st
century (2001-2068).
If the format string does not contain enough conversion specifications to completely specify the
resulting struct tm, the unspecified members of tm are left untouched. For example, if format is
``%H:%M:%S'', only tm_hour, tm_sec and tm_min will be modified. If time relative to today is desired,
initialize the tm structure with today's date before passing it to strptime().
While the strptime() function uses the current locale, the strptime_l() function may be passed a locale
directly. See xlocale(3) for more information.
RETURN VALUES
Upon successful completion, strptime() returns the pointer to the first character in buf that has not
been required to satisfy the specified conversions in format. It returns NULL if one of the conver-sions conversions
sions failed.
LEGACY DESCRIPTION
In legacy mode, the %Y format specifier expects exactly 4 digits (leaving any trailing digits for the
next specifier).
SEE ALSO
date(1), scanf(3), strftime(3), xlocale(3)
AUTHORS
The strptime() function has been contributed by Powerdog Industries.
This man page was written by Jrg Wunsch.
HISTORY
The strptime() function appeared in FreeBSD 3.0.
BUGS
Both the %e and %l format specifiers may incorrectly scan one too many digits if the intended values
comprise only a single digit and that digit is followed immediately by another digit. Both specifiers
accept zero-padded values, even though they are both defined as taking unpadded values.
The %p format specifier has no effect unless it is parsed after hour-related specifiers. Specifying %l
without %p will produce undefined results. Note that 12AM (ante meridiem) is taken as midnight and
12PM (post meridiem) is taken as noon.
The %U and %W format specifiers accept any value within the range 00 to 53 without validating against
other values supplied (like month or day of the year, for example).
The %Z format specifier only accepts time zone abbreviations of the local time zone, or the value
"GMT". This limitation is because of ambiguity due to of the over loading of time zone abbreviations.
One such example is EST which is both Eastern Standard Time and Eastern Australia Summer Time.
The strptime() function does not correctly handle multibyte characters in the format argument.
BSD January 4, 2003 BSD
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