Node:Parsing Date and Time, Next:, Previous:Formatting Calendar Time, Up:Calendar Time



Convert textual time and date information back

The ISO C standard does not specify any functions which can convert the output of the strftime function back into a binary format. This led to a variety of more-or-less successful implementations with different interfaces over the years. Then the Unix standard was extended by the addition of two functions: strptime and getdate. Both have strange interfaces but at least they are widely available.