TIME2POSIX(3)						   BSD Library Functions Manual 					     TIME2POSIX(3)

NAME

     time2posix, time2posix_z, posix2time, posix2time_z, -- convert seconds since the Epoch

LIBRARY

     Standard C Library (libc, -lc)

SYNOPSIS

     #include <time.h>

     time_t
     time2posix(time_t t);

     time_t
     time2posix_z(const timezone_t tz, time_t t);

     time_t
     posix2time(time_t t);

     time_t
     posix2time_z(const timezone_t tz, time_t t);

DESCRIPTION

     IEEE Std 1003.1 (``POSIX.1'') legislates that a time_t value of 536457599 shall correspond to
	   Wed Dec 31 23:59:59 UTC 1986.
     This effectively implies that POSIX time_t's cannot include leap seconds and, therefore, that the system time must be adjusted as each leap
     occurs.

     If the time package is configured with leap-second support enabled, however, no such adjustment is needed and time_t values continue to
     increase over leap events (as a true `seconds since...' value).  This means that these values will differ from those required by POSIX by the
     net number of leap seconds inserted since the Epoch.

     Typically this is not a problem as the type time_t is intended to be (mostly) opaque -- time_t values should only be obtained-from and
     passed-to functions such as time(3), localtime(3), localtime_r(3), localtime_rz(3), mktime(3), mktime_z(3), and difftime(3).  However, POSIX
     gives an arithmetic expression for directly computing a time_t value from a given date/time, and the same relationship is assumed by some
     (usually older) applications.  Any programs creating/dissecting time_t's using such a relationship will typically not handle intervals over
     leap seconds correctly.

     The time2posix(), time2posix_z(), posix2time(), and posix2time_z() functions are provided to address this time_t mismatch by converting
     between local time_t values and their POSIX equivalents.  This is done by accounting for the number of time-base changes that would have
     taken place on a POSIX system as leap seconds were inserted or deleted.  These converted values can then be used in lieu of correcting the
     older applications, or when communicating with POSIX-compliant systems.

     time2posix() and time2posix_z() are single-valued.  That is, every local time_t corresponds to a single POSIX time_t.  posix2time() and
     posix2time() are less well-behaved: for a positive leap second hit the result is not unique, and for a negative leap second hit the corre-
     sponding POSIX time_t doesn't exist so an adjacent value is returned.  Both of these are good indicators of the inferiority of the POSIX rep-
     resentation.

     The ``z'' variants of the two functions behave exactly like their counterparts, but they operate in the given tz argument which was previ-
     ously allocated using tzalloc(3) and are re-entrant.

     The following table summarizes the relationship between a time_t and its conversion to, and back from, the POSIX representation over the leap
     second inserted at the end of June, 1993.

	   DATE       TIME	 T     X=time2posix(T)	 posix2time(X)
	   93/06/30   23:59:59	 A+0   B+0		 A+0
	   93/06/30   23:59:60	 A+1   B+1		 A+1 or A+2
	   93/07/01   00:00:00	 A+2   B+1		 A+1 or A+2
	   93/07/01   00:00:01	 A+3   B+2		 A+3

     A leap second deletion would look like...

	   DATE       TIME	 T     X=time2posix(T)	 posix2time(X)
	   ??/06/30   23:59:58	 A+0   B+0		 A+0
	   ??/07/01   00:00:00	 A+1   B+2		 A+1
	   ??/07/01   00:00:01	 A+2   B+3		 A+2
     [Note: posix2time(B+1) => A+0 or A+1]

     If leap-second support is not enabled, local time_t's and POSIX time_t's are equivalent, and both time2posix() and posix2time() degenerate to
     the identity function.

SEE ALSO

     difftime(3), localtime(3), localtime_r(3), localtime_rz(3), mktime(3), mktime_z(3), time(3), tzalloc(3)

BSD
								 December 4, 2010							       BSD