difftime

 

C

Language

Headers

Type support

Program utilities

Variadic function support

Error handling

Dynamic memory management

Strings library

Algorithms

Numerics

Date and time utilities

Input/output support

Localization support

Concurrency support (C11)

Technical Specifications

Symbol index

 

Date and time utilities

Functions

Time manipulation

difftime

time

clock

timespec_get (C11)

timespec_getres (C23)

Format conversions

asctimeasctime_s (deprecated in C23)(C11)

ctimectime_s (deprecated in C23)(C11)

strftime

wcsftime (C95)

gmtimegmtime_rgmtime_s (C23)(C11)

localtimelocaltime_rlocaltime_s (C23)(C11)

mktime

Constants

CLOCKS_PER_SEC

Types

tm

time_t

clock_t

timespec (C11)

 

Defined in header <time.h>
double difftime( time_t time_end, time_t time_beg );

Computes difference between two calendar times as time_t objects (time_end - time_beg) in seconds. If time_end refers to time point before time_beg then the result is negative.

Parameters

time_beg, time_end

-

times to compare

Return value

Difference between two times in seconds.

Notes

On POSIX systems, time_t is measured in seconds, and difftime is equivalent to arithmetic subtraction, but C and C++ allow fractional units for time_t.

Example

The following program computes the number of seconds that have passed since the beginning of the month.

Run this code

#include <stdio.h>
#include <time.h>
 
int main(void)
{
    time_t now = time(0);
 
    struct tm beg = *localtime(&now);
 
    // set beg to the beginning of the month
    beg.tm_hour = 0,
    beg.tm_min = 0,
    beg.tm_sec = 0,
    beg.tm_mday = 1;
 
    double seconds = difftime(now, mktime(&beg));
 
    printf("%.f seconds have passed since the beginning of the month.\n", seconds);
 
    return 0;
}

Output:

1937968 seconds have passed since the beginning of the month.

References

• C17 standard (ISO/IEC 9899:2018):

• 7.27.2.2 The difftime function (p: 285)

• C11 standard (ISO/IEC 9899:2011):

• 7.27.2.2 The difftime function (p: 390)

• C99 standard (ISO/IEC 9899:1999):

• 7.23.2.2 The difftime function (p: 338)

• C89/C90 standard (ISO/IEC 9899:1990):

• 7.12.2.2 The difftime function (p: 171)