STRPTIME(3)						   BSD Library Functions Manual 					       STRPTIME(3)

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 tm);

     #include <time.h>
     #include <xlocale.h>

     char *
     strptime_l(const char *restrict buf, const char *restrict format, struct tm *restrict tm, 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 tm.  The resulting values will be relative to the local time zone.  Thus, it can be considered the reverse operation
     of strftime(3).

     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 inter-
     preted in the 20th century (1969-2000), years 01-68 in the 21st century (2001-2068).

     If the format string does not contain enough conversion specifications to completely specify the resulting struct tm, the unspecified members
     of tm 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 tm structure with today's date before passing it to strptime().

     While the strptime() function uses the current locale, the strptime_l() function may be passed a locale directly. See xlocale(3) for more
     information.

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.

LEGACY DESCRIPTION

     In legacy mode, the %Y format specifier expects exactly 4 digits (leaving any trailing digits for the next specifier).

SEE ALSO

     date(1), scanf(3), strftime(3), xlocale(3)

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 Jorg 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 and format specifiers accept any value within the range 00 to 53 without validating against other values supplied (like month or day of
     the year, for example).

     The 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 which is both Eastern Standard Time and Eastern
     Australia Summer Time.

     The function does not correctly handle multibyte characters in the format argument.

BSD
								  January 4, 2003							       BSD