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 timeptr);
#include <time.h>
#include <xlocale.h>
char *
strptime_l(const
char * restrict buf,
const char * restrict
format, struct tm *
restrict timeptr,
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 timeptr. The
resulting values will be relative to the local time zone. Thus, it can be
considered the reverse operation of
strftime(3). The
strptime_l()
function does the same as strptime(), but takes an
explicit locale rather than using the current locale.
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). The %U and %W format specifiers accept any value within the range 00 to 53.
If the format string does
not contain enough conversion specifications to completely specify the
resulting struct tm, the unspecified members of
timeptr 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 timeptr structure with today's
date before passing it to
strptime().
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 conversions failed. strptime_l() returns the
same values as strptime().
LEGACY DESCRIPTION
In legacy mode, the %Y format specifier expects exactly 4 digits (leaving any trailing digits for the next specifier).
SEE ALSO
HISTORY
The strptime() function appeared in
FreeBSD 3.0.
AUTHORS
The strptime() function has been
contributed by Powerdog Industries.
This man page was written by Jörg Wunsch.
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 %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.