Re: Conversion to UNIX time

[Keith Thompson <kst@cts.com>]

tennisbb@aol.com (Tennisbb) writes:
> My project has decided to name recording files (of which there will
> probably be MANY) by a number of fields, the first two of which will
> be Start Time and End Time in 8-digit Hex UNIX time.  Despite our
> wide use of re-use, I can't locate any routines to convert Calendar
> Time to an 8-digit Hex string, and wondered if anyone has any
> procedures they'd be willing to share...  The reason for the Hex
> times is to reduce the search time later.

You might try interfacing to the standard C function mktime() (or
using an existing binding if you can find one).  There are a few
things to watch out for: tm_year is year - 1900, and tm_mon is in the
range 0..11, not 1..12.  If you're on a Unix system, see the mktime(3)
man page for details.

Note that the C standard does not guarantee that time_t measures
seconds since 1970-01-01 00:00:00 UTC, though I think POSIX does.

If you're interested in the current time rather than necessarily
converting from an existing Calendar.Time value, you might consider
interfacing directly to C's time() function.

-- 
Keith Thompson (The_Other_Keith) kst@cts.com  <http://www.ghoti.net/~kst>
San Diego Supercomputer Center           <*>  <http://www.sdsc.edu/~kst>
Welcome to the last year of the 20th century.