mktime

 

C

Language

Headers

Type support

Program utilities

Variadic function support

Error handling

Dynamic memory management

Strings library

Algorithms

Numerics

Date and time utilities

Input/output support

Localization support

Concurrency support (C11)

Technical Specifications

Symbol index

 

Date and time utilities

Functions

Time manipulation

difftime

time

clock

timespec_get (C11)

timespec_getres (C23)

Format conversions

asctimeasctime_s (deprecated in C23)(C11)

ctimectime_s (deprecated in C23)(C11)

strftime

wcsftime (C95)

gmtimegmtime_rgmtime_s (C23)(C11)

localtimelocaltime_rlocaltime_s (C23)(C11)

mktime

Constants

CLOCKS_PER_SEC

Types

tm

time_t

clock_t

timespec (C11)

 

Defined in header <time.h>
time_t mktime( struct tm *arg );

Renormalizes local calendar time expressed as a struct tm object and also converts it to time since epoch as a time_t object. arg->tm_wday and arg->tm_yday are ignored. The values in arg are not checked for being out of range.

A negative value of arg->tm_isdst causes mktime to attempt to determine if Daylight Saving Time was in effect in the specified time.

If the conversion to time_t is successful, the arg object is modified. All fields of arg are updated to fit their proper ranges. arg->tm_wday and arg->tm_yday are recalculated using information available in other fields.

Parameters

arg

-

pointer to a tm object specifying local calendar time to convert

Return value

time since epoch as a time_t object on success, or -1 if arg cannot be represented as a time_t object (POSIX also requires EOVERFLOW to be stored in errno in this case).

Notes

If the struct tm object was obtained from POSIX strptime or equivalent function, the value of tm_isdst is indeterminate, and needs to be set explicitly before calling mktime.

Example

Run this code

#define _POSIX_C_SOURCE 200112L // for setenv on gcc
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <stdio.h>
#include <time.h>
 
int main(void)
{
    setenv("TZ", "/usr/share/zoneinfo/America/New_York", 1); // POSIX-specific
 
    struct tm tm = *localtime(&(time_t){time(NULL)});
    printf("Today is           %s", asctime(&tm));
    printf("(DST is %s)\n", tm.tm_isdst ? "in effect" : "not in effect");
    tm.tm_mon -= 100;  // tm_mon is now outside its normal range
    mktime(&tm);       // tm_isdst is not set to -1; today's DST status is used
    printf("100 months ago was %s", asctime(&tm));
    printf("(DST was %s)\n", tm.tm_isdst ? "in effect" : "not in effect");
}

Possible output:

Today is           Fri Apr 22 11:53:36 2016
(DST is in effect)
100 months ago was Sat Dec 22 10:53:36 2007
(DST was not in effect)

References

• C17 standard (ISO/IEC 9899:2018):

• 7.27.2.3 The mktime function (p: 285-286)

• C11 standard (ISO/IEC 9899:2011):

• 7.27.2.3 The mktime function (p: 390-391)

• C99 standard (ISO/IEC 9899:1999):

• 7.23.2.3 The mktime function (p: 340-341)

• C89/C90 standard (ISO/IEC 9899:1990):

• 4.12.2.3 The mktime function

See also

localtimelocaltime_rlocaltime_s (C23)(C11)	converts time since epoch to calendar time expressed as local time (function)
C++ documentation for mktime