Date: 2007Feb23 Platform: win32 Language: C Keywords: time, date Q. C/C++: The classic C time functions are not thread safe. What should I do? A. Update: use localtime_s() if you're on Windows. If your code has threads you should *not* use localtime(), gmtime(), asctime(). They all modify hidden global variables. Here's the code for localtime_r() which is thread-safe...

// Helper function from MSDN Q167296 static void UnixTimeToFileTime(const time_t t, LPFILETIME pft) { LONGLONG ll; ll = Int32x32To64(t, 10000000) + 116444736000000000; pft->dwLowDateTime = (DWORD)ll; pft->dwHighDateTime = ll >> 32; } struct tm *localtime_r(const time_t *clock, struct tm *result) { FILETIME ft; SYSTEMTIME st; SYSTEMTIME lst; if (clock == NULL || result == NULL) return NULL; ZeroMemory(result, sizeof(struct tm)); UnixTimeToFileTime(*clock, &ft); FileTimeToSystemTime(&ft, &st); SystemTimeToTzSpecificLocalTime(NULL, &st, &lst); result->tm_year = lst.wYear - 1900; result->tm_mon = lst.wMonth - 1; result->tm_wday = lst.wDayOfWeek; result->tm_mday = lst.wDay; result->tm_hour = lst.wHour; result->tm_min = lst.wMinute; result->tm_sec = lst.wSecond; result->tm_isdst = -1; // Don't know result->tm_yday = -1; // Don't know return result; }

Or simply use the Windows API functions (which are reentrant):

SYSTEMTIME lt; GetLocalTime(&lt); // The time on this computer

SYSTEMTIME st; SystemTime(&st); // The GMT time

They are higher resolution too. But not portable.