ADC Home > Reference Library > Reference > Mac OS X > Mac OS X Man Pages

 

This document is a Mac OS X manual page. Manual pages are a command-line technology for providing documentation. You can view these manual pages locally using the man(1) command. These manual pages come from many different sources, and thus, have a variety of writing styles.

For more information about the manual page format, see the manual page for manpages(5).



clock(n)                                    Tcl Built-In Commands                                   clock(n)



____________________________________________________________________________________________________________

NAME
       clock - Obtain and manipulate time

SYNOPSIS
       clock option ?arg arg ...?
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________


DESCRIPTION
       This  command performs one of several operations that may obtain or manipulate strings or values that
       represent some notion of time.  The option argument determines what action is carried out by the com-mand. command.
       mand.  The legal options (which may be abbreviated) are:

       clock clicks ?-millisec-                                                                              |
       onds?                                                                          |                      |
              Return a high-resolution time value as a system-dependent integer  value.   The  unit  of  the |
              value  is  system-dependent but should be the highest resolution clock available on the system |
              such as a CPU cycle counter. If -milliseconds is specified, then the value is guaranteed to be |
              of  millisecond  granularity.   This value should only be used for the relative measurement of |
              elapsed time.

       clock format clockValue ?-format string? ?-gmt boolean?
              Converts an integer time value, typically returned by clock seconds, clock scan, or the  atime
              or  mtime  options  of  the  file command, to human-readable form.  If the -format argument is
              present the next argument is a string that describes how the date and time are to  be  format-ted. formatted.
              ted.   Field  descriptors  consist of a % followed by a field descriptor character.  All other
              characters are copied into the result.  Valid field descriptors are:

              %%     Insert a %.

              %a     Abbreviated weekday name (Mon, Tue, etc.).

              %A     Full weekday name (Monday, Tuesday, etc.).

              %b     Abbreviated month name (Jan, Feb, etc.).

              %B     Full month name.                                                                        |

              %c                                                                                             ||
                     Locale  specific date and time.  The format for date and time in the default "C" locale |
                     on Unix/Mac is "%a %b %d %H:%M:%S %Y".  On Windows, this value is the  locale  specific |
                     long date and time, as specified in the Regional Options control panel settings.        |

              %C                                                                                             ||
                     First two digits of the four-digit year (19 or 20).

              %d     Day of month (01 - 31).                                                                 |

              %D                                                                                             ||
                     Date as %m/%d/%y.                                                                       |

              %e                                                                                             ||
                     Day of month (1 - 31), no leading zeros.                                                |

              %g                                                                                             ||
                     The  ISO8601  year  number  corresponding to the ISO8601 week (%V), expressed as a two- |
                     digit year-of-the-century, with leading zero if necessary.                              |

              %G                                                                                             ||
                     The  ISO8601  year  number corresponding to the ISO8601 week (%V), expressed as a four- |
                     digit number.                                                                           |

              %h                                                                                             ||
                     Abbreviated month name.

              %H     Hour in 24-hour format (00 - 23).                                                       |

              %I                                                                                             ||
                     Hour in 12-hour format (01 - 12).

              %j     Day of year (001 - 366).                                                                |

              %k                                                                                             ||
                     Hour in 24-hour format, without leading zeros (0 - 23).                                 |

              %l                                                                                             ||
                     Hour in 12-hour format, without leading zeros (1 - 12).

              %m     Month number (01 - 12).

              %M     Minute (00 - 59).                                                                       |

              %n                                                                                             ||
                     Insert a newline.

              %p     AM/PM indicator.                                                                        |

              %r                                                                                             ||
                     Time in a locale-specific "meridian" format.  The "meridian" format in the default  "C" |
                     locale is "%I:%M:%S %p".                                                                |

              %R                                                                                             ||
                     Time as %H:%M.                                                                          |

              %s                                                                                             ||
                     Count of seconds since the epoch, expressed as a decimal integer.

              %S     Seconds (00 - 59).                                                                      |

              %t                                                                                             ||
                     Insert a tab.                                                                           |

              %T                                                                                             ||
                     Time as %H:%M:%S.                                                                       |

              %u                                                                                             ||
                     Weekday number (Monday = 1, Sunday = 7).

              %U     Week of year (00 - 52), Sunday is the first day of the week.                            |

              %V                                                                                             ||
                     Week  of year according to ISO-8601 rules.  Week 1 of a given year is the week contain- |
                     ing 4 January.                                                                          |

              %w                                                                                             ||
                     Weekday number (Sunday = 0, Saturday = 6).

              %W     Week of year (00 - 52), Monday is the first day of the week.                            |

              %x                                                                                             ||
                     Locale specific date format.  The format for a date  in  the  default  "C"  locale  for |
                     Unix/Mac  is "%m/%d/%y".  On Windows, this value is the locale specific short date for- |
                     mat, as specified in the Regional Options control panel settings.                       |

              %X                                                                                             ||
                     Locale  specific 24-hour time format.  The format for a 24-hour time in the default "C" |
                     locale for Unix/Mac is "%H:%M:%S".  On Windows, this value is the locale specific  time |
                     format, as specified in the Regional Options control panel settings.

              %y     Year without century (00 - 99).

              %Y     Year with century (e.g. 1990)

              %Z     Time zone name.

              If the -format argument is not specified, the format string "%a %b %d %H:%M:%S %Z %Y" is used. |
              If the -gmt argument is present the next argument must be a boolean which  if  true  specifies
              that  the time will be formatted as Greenwich Mean Time. If false then the local timezone will
              be used as defined by the operating environment.

       clock scan dateString ?-base clockVal? ?-gmt boolean?
              Convert dateString to an integer clock value (see clock seconds).  This command can parse  and
              convert  virtually  any standard date and/or time string, which can include standard time zone
              mnemonics.  If only a time is specified, the current date is assumed.  If the string does  not
              contain  a  time  zone  mnemonic,  the local time zone is assumed, unless the -gmt argument is
              true, in which case the clock value is calculated assuming that the specified time is relative
              to Greenwich Mean Time.  -gmt, if specified, affects only the computed time value; it does not
              impact the interpretation of -base.

              If the -base flag is specified, the next argument should contain an integer clock value.  Only
              the  date  in  this value is used, not the time.  This is useful for determining the time on a
              specific day or doing other date-relative conversions.

              The dateString consists of zero or more specifications of the following form:

              time   A time of day, which is of the form: hh?:mm?:ss??  ?meridian? ?zone? or hhmm ?meridian?
                     ?zone?. If no meridian is specified, hh is interpreted on a 24-hour clock.

              date   A  specific  month  and day with optional year.  The acceptable formats are mm/dd?/yy?,
                     monthname dd ?, yy?, dd monthname ?yy?, day, dd monthname yy, ?CC?yymmdd, ?CC?yy-mm-dd,
                     dd-monthname-?CC?yy.   The  default year is the current year.  If the year is less than |
                     100, we treat the years 00-68 as 2000-2068 and the years 69-99 as 1969-1999.   Not  all |
                     platforms  can  represent  the  years  38-70, so an error may result if these years are |
                     used.

              ISO 8601 point-in-time
                     An ISO 8601 point-in-time specification, such as CCyymmddThhmmss, where T is  the  lit-eral literal
                     eral T, CCyymmdd hhmmss, or CCyymmddThh:mm:ss.

              relative time
                     A  specification  relative  to  the current time.  The format is number unit acceptable
                     units are year, fortnight, month, week, day, hour, minute  (or  min),  and  second  (or
                     sec).   The  unit can be specified as a singular or plural, as in 3 weeks.  These modi-fiers modifiers
                     fiers may also be specified: tomorrow, yesterday, today, now, last, this, next, ago.

              The actual date is calculated according to the following  steps.   First,  any  absolute  date
              and/or  time  is processed and converted.  Using that time as the base, day-of-week specifica-tions specifications
              tions are added.  Next, relative specifications are used.  If a date or day is specified,  and
              no  absolute or relative time is given, midnight is used.  Finally, a correction is applied so
              that the correct hour of the day is produced after allowing for daylight savings time  differ-ences differences
              ences  and the correct date is given when going from the end of a long month to a short month.

              Daylight savings time correction is applied only when the relative time is specified in  units
              of  days or more, ie, days, weeks, fortnights, months or years.  This means that when crossing
              the daylight savings time boundary, different results will be given for clock scan "1 day" and
              clock scan "24 hours":
                     % clock scan "1 day" -base [clock scan 1999-10-31]
                     941443200
                     % clock scan "24 hours" -base [clock scan 1999-10-31]
                     941439600

       clock seconds
              Return  the  current date and time as a system-dependent integer value.  The unit of the value
              is seconds, allowing it to be used for relative  time  calculations.   The  value  is  usually
              defined as total elapsed time from an ``epoch''.  You shouldn't assume the value of the epoch.


SEE ALSO
       date(1), time(n)


KEYWORDS
       clock, date, time



Tcl                                                  8.4                                            clock(n)

Did this document help you?
Yes: Tell us what works for you.
It’s good, but: Report typos, inaccuracies, and so forth.
It wasn’t helpful: Tell us what would have helped.