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strptime() equivalent on Windows?

c c++ datetime windows

Question

Is there a good equivalent implementation of strptime() available for Windows? Unfortunately, this POSIX function does not appear to be available.

Open Group description of strptime - summary: it converts a text string such as "MM-DD-YYYY HH:MM:SS" into a tm struct, the opposite of strftime().

1
37
11/26/2008 7:33:15 PM

Accepted Answer

An open-source version (BSD license) of strptime() can be found here: http://cvsweb.netbsd.org/bsdweb.cgi/src/lib/libc/time/strptime.c?rev=HEAD

You'll need to add the following declaration to use it:

char *strptime(const char * __restrict, const char * __restrict, struct tm * __restrict);
20
11/26/2008 7:29:30 PM

If you don't want to port any code or condemn your project to boost, you can do this:

  1. parse the date using sscanf
  2. then copy the integers into a struct tm (subtract 1 from month and 1900 from year -- months are 0-11 and years start in 1900)
  3. finally, use mktime to get a UTC epoch integer

Just remember to set the isdst member of the struct tm to -1, or else you'll have daylight savings issues.

amwinter

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