Calendar Time

This section describes facilities for keeping track of dates and times according to the Gregorian calendar.

There are three representations for date and time information:

• Calendar time (the time_t data type) is a compact representation, typically giving the number of seconds elapsed since some implementation-specific base time.
• There is also a high-resolution time representation (the struct timeval data type) that includes fractions of a second. Use this time representation instead of ordinary calendar time when you need greater precision.
• Local time or broken-down time (the struct tm data type) represents the date and time as a set of components specifying the year, month, and so on, for a specific time zone. This time representation is usually used in conjunction with formatting date and time values.

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