Date/time conversion: string representation to time_t

Question

What's the best way to convert a date string, formatted as "MM-DD-YY HH:MM:SS", to a time_t value in either C or C++?

Answer 1

I'm afraid there isn't any in Standard C / C++ . There is the POSIX function strptime which can convert to struct tm, which can then be converted to time_t using mktime.

If you are aiming for cross platform compatibility, better use boost::date_time, which has sophisticated functions for this.

Answer 2

Use strptime() to parse the time into a struct tm, then use mktime() to convert to a time_t.

Answer 3

Boost's date time library should help; in particular you might want to look at http://www.boost.org/doc/libs/1_37_0/doc/html/date_time/date_time_io.html

Answer 4

In the absence of strptime you could use sscanf to parse the data into a struct tm and then call mktime. Not the most elegant solution but it would work.