How can I get the current time in milliseconds using C?

Question

How might I get the current time in milliseconds in C? I am doing following to get the time in seconds:

struct tm ptm;

now = time(NULL);

localtime_r(&now,ptm);

myTime= (ptm->tm_hour * 3600) + (ptm->tm_min * 60) + (ptm->tm_sec);

Looking at time.h, struct tm does not have the millisecond member in it.

Answer 1

• On Unix, use gettimeofday() to get the answer in microseconds and scale to milliseconds.
• Or use POSIX clock_gettime() to get the answer in nanoseconds and scale to milliseconds.

Answer 2

I use ftime for time tracking (link text)