[LC++]gettimeofday and C++

[Chris Vine]

On Friday 09 November 2001 6:15 am, Mark Phillips wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I want to get access to the time from C++ (along with various other
> system type things like detecting kill signals).  A little searching
> and it seems the function "gettimeofday" is what I want.  In order that
> I may use this function, I did:
>
> #include <ctime>
>
> but it couldn't find gettimeofday.  I changed it to:
>
> #include <sys/time.h>
>
> and it seems to work.  But this is not the preferred way of doing things
> in C++.  It means things in sys/time.h are not in the std namespace --- not
> a major problem, but it would be nice to do things the right way.
>
> Any ideas on why #include <ctime> wouldn't work?

gettimeofday() is a Unix and not an ANSI-C function, so there isn't a Std-C++ 
ctime header file and it is not in std namespace.

In fact, it is not even POSIX -- the POSIX function time() is in time.h, the 
BSD gettimeofday() is in sys/time.h in Linux/BSD systems.

If you are going to use POSIX time(), look also at gmtime() and localtime() 
to make it useful (strftime() is also helpful).

Chris.