Path: utzoo!censor!geac!torsqnt!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!bonnie.concordia.ca!uunet!bria!mike
Newsgroups: comp.unix.programmer
Subject: Re: How to get the time of the day in C?
Message-ID: <345@bria>
Date: 11 Jan 91 21:15:22 GMT
References: <2584@trlluna.trl.oz>
Reply-To: mike@bria.UUCP (Michael Stefanik)
Organization: Briareus Corporation, Los Angeles, CA
Lines: 41

In article <2584@trlluna.trl.oz> shiva.trl.oz!hui (Alvaro Hui) writes:
>Hi all experts:
>
> I am writing a small program to generate random numbers in C and
>an idea came up in my mind: it is a good idea to use the time of the
>day as seed to my random generator!
>
> Unfortunately, I "man -k time" and search through all my 'C' books
>and couldn't came up an idea how to get current time in C.
>
> Can some of you folks help me?
>

Try ...
	#include <time.h>

	long	now;	/* number of seconds since the Epoch */

		time(&now);
		printf("%s",ctime(&now));	/* time string */

'now' will contain the number of seconds since 00:00 GMT on 1 Jan 1970
(aka "the Epoch"); the ctime() function was thrown in for giggles.
If a long is too high, then you could use:

	long now;
	int today;
	struct tm *t;	/* localtime structure defined in time.h */

		time(&now);
		t = localtime(&now);
		today = t->tm_sec + (t->tm_min * 60) + (t->tm_hour * 3600);

where 'today' is the number of seconds elapsed since midnight.
Hope that helps ...
-- 
Michael Stefanik, Systems Engineer (JOAT), Briareus Corporation
UUCP: ...!uunet!bria!mike
--
technoignorami (tek'no-ig'no-ram`i) a group of individuals that are constantly
found to be saying things like "Well, it works on my DOS machine ..."