TIMES(2) System Calls Manual TIMES(2)NAME
times - get process times
SYNOPSIS
#include <sys/types.h>
#include <sys/times.h>
#include <time.h>
int times(struct tms *buffer)
DESCRIPTION
Times returns time-accounting information for the current process and for the terminated child processes of the current process. All times
are in 1/CLOCKS_PER_SEC seconds.
This is the structure returned by times:
struct tms {
clock_t tms_utime; /* user time for this process */
clock_t tms_stime; /* system time for this process */
clock_t tms_cutime; /* children's user time */
clock_t tms_cstime; /* children's system time */
};
The user time is the number of clock ticks used by a process on its own computations. The system time is the number of clock ticks spent
inside the kernel on behalf of a process. This does not include time spent waiting for I/O to happen, only actual CPU instruction times.
The children times are the sum of the children's process times and their children's times.
RETURN
Times returns 0 on success, otherwise -1 with the error code stored into the global variable errno.
ERRORS
The following error code may be set in errno:
[EFAULT] The address specified by the buffer parameter is not in a valid part of the process address space.
SEE ALSO time(1), wait(2), time(2).
4th Berkeley Distribution May 9, 1985 TIMES(2)
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TIMES(2) Linux Programmer's Manual TIMES(2)NAME
times - get process times
SYNOPSIS
#include <sys/times.h>
clock_t times(struct tms *buf);
DESCRIPTION
The times() function stores the current process times in the struct tms that buf points to. The struct tms is as defined in <sys/times.h>:
struct tms {
clock_t tms_utime; /* user time */
clock_t tms_stime; /* system time */
clock_t tms_cutime; /* user time of children */
clock_t tms_cstime; /* system time of children */
};
The tms_utime field contains the CPU time spent executing instructions of the calling process. The tms_stime field contains the CPU time
spent in the system while executing tasks on behalf of the calling process. The tms_cutime field contains the sum of the tms_utime and
tms_cutime values for all waited-for terminated children. The tms_cstime field contains the sum of the tms_stime and tms_cstime values for
all waited-for terminated children.
Times for terminated children (and their descendants) is added in at the moment wait(2) or waitpid(2) returns their process ID. In particu-
lar, times of grandchildren that the children did not wait for are never seen.
All times reported are in clock ticks.
RETURN VALUE
The function times returns the number of clock ticks that have elapsed since an arbitrary point in the past. For Linux this point is the
moment the system was booted. This return value may overflow the possible range of type clock_t. On error, (clock_t) -1 is returned, and
errno is set appropriately.
NOTES
The number of clock ticks per second can be obtained using
sysconf(_SC_CLK_TCK);
In POSIX-1996 the symbol CLK_TCK (defined in <time.h>) is mentioned as obsolescent. It is obsolete now.
On Linux, if the disposition of SIGCHLD is set to SIG_IGN then the times of terminated children are automatically included in the
tms_cstime and tms_cutime fields, although POSIX 1003.1-2001 says that this should only happen if the calling process wait()s on its chil-
dren.
Note that clock(3) returns values of type clock_t that are not measured in clock ticks but in CLOCKS_PER_SEC.
CONFORMING TO
SVr4, SVID, POSIX, X/OPEN, BSD 4.3
HISTORICAL NOTES
SVr1-3 returns long and the struct members are of type time_t although they store clock ticks, not seconds since the epoch. V7 used long
for the struct members, because it had no type time_t yet.
On older systems the number of clock ticks per second is given by the variable HZ.
SEE ALSO time(1), getrusage(2), wait(2), clock(3), sysconf(3)Linux 2002-06-14 TIMES(2)