[Techtalk] getting the time as a string in c

[Dan]

>     int timestrsize = 10;       /* max length of time string */
>     char *timestring;
>     char timeformat[2] = "%c";  /* format for time string */
>     const struct tm *timeptr;
> 
>     size_t strftime(timestring, timestrsize, timeformat, timeptr);

Is that your whole main()? Did you notice that "timestring" is never
initialised?

Also, note that "timeformat" is defined to have length 2, but it has to
have length 3 because all strings in C are null-terminated. (The length
isn't stored; the end is signaled by '\0').

> I have absolutely no idea what "const struct tm *timeptr" is doing...
> the rest of it I think I understand at least somewhat.

The answer is in "man ctime". Briefly put, "strftime" doesn't format the
current time only; it accepts a time that you pass in.

> I think before I had "char timestring[10];" instead of "char
> *timestring;".  When that was the case, gcc didn't complain and the
> program compiled, but running it produced a segmentation fault.

I would think it would be the opposite: "char timestring[10];" is at
least initialised and so doesn't lead to pointer worries. "char
*timestring" is an uninitialised pointer.

-- 
 I'm an idiot. At least this one [bug] took about 5 minutes to find.
         - attributed to Linus Torvalds