Converting time string to seconds in C++ issues - c++

I'm writing a C++ application on an embedded ARM device running Embedded Linux.
I am trying to convert a date and time string to seconds, subtract it from the current time in seconds, and taking action if the number of seconds elapsed is greater than a certain number.
Something that should be quite simple to implement has proved quite tricky, and i'm not sure why.
The time difference i'm calculating turns out to be a massive number, when it should really be a low number. See my below code. I'm manually hardcoding a time and date string for testing.
std::string timestr = "2020-12-21T16:07:00";
struct tm t = {0};
sscanf(timestr.c_str(), "%04d-%02d-%02dT%02d:%02d:%02d",
&t.tm_year, &t.tm_mon, &t.tm_mday,
&t.tm_hour, &t.tm_min, &t.tm_sec);
t.tm_year -= 1900; // This is required because my year should be the number of years since 1900
auto tp = std::chrono::system_clock::from_time_t(std::mktime(&t));
auto now = std::chrono::system_clock::now();
auto now_s = std::chrono::time_point_cast<std::chrono::seconds>(now);
auto tp_s = std::chrono::time_point_cast<std::chrono::seconds>(tp);
std::chrono::duration<double> diff = now-tp; // Huge number
auto elapsed = now_s - tp_s; // This value is massive and not as expected when printed out

For those who are interested, I solved this problem.
Not only should we subtract 1900 from the number of years before calling std::mktime(&t) .
t.tm_year -= 1900;
but also 1 must be subtracted from the number of months t.tm_mon -= 1 .
The months are numbered from 0 to 11 and not 1 to 12 as we would expect.
This explains why there was a big difference in seconds.

Related

How to get accurate <1seconds measurements utilizing std::chrono [duplicate]

This question already has answers here:
Measuring execution time of a function in C++
(14 answers)
Getting an accurate execution time in C++ (micro seconds)
(4 answers)
Closed 2 months ago.
I'm trying to compute the amount of time an algorithm runs in my program, and display that amount in differents meausures such as seconds, miliseconds, microseconds...
This is how I've been approaching it:
auto start = high_resolution_clock::now();
myFunction();
auto stop = high_resolution_clock::now();
auto duration = duration_cast<seconds>(stop - start);
const auto hrs = duration_cast<hours>(duration);
const auto mins = duration_cast<minutes>(duration - hrs);
const auto secs = duration_cast<seconds>(duration - hrs - mins);
const auto ms = duration_cast<milliseconds>(duration - hrs - mins - secs);
std::cout << "Time needed: "<<hrs.count()<<" hours "<<mins.count()<<" mins "<<secs.count()<<" secs " <<ms.count()<<" milisecs "
What I intend it to do (invented example):
Time needed: 0 hours 1 mins 30 seconds 2400miliseconds
BUt for some reasons it prints all 0s (even miliseconds) when times are <1secs, and when times are 1secs or more, it does not prints the exact time either, it does something like
Time needed: 0 hours 0 mins 1 seconds 1000miliseconds
it just print a whole seconds and then it converts it to the others meausures, but the actual time that I took the function to works is not exactly 1 second, how can I get that? (if theres better ways to do that other than std::chrono I'll be interested too)

Fractional day of the year computation in C++14

I wrote the following code using Howard Hinnants date.h library, to compute the fractional day of the year of the current time. I was wondering if there are shorter ways of doing it, because my code feels like an overkill of std::chrono and date calls. Can I directly calculate the number of fractional days since the start of the year (at microsecond precision) and avoid my two-step approach?
#include <iostream>
#include <chrono>
#include "date.h"
int main()
{
// Get actual time.
auto now = std::chrono::system_clock::now();
// Get the number of days since start of the year.
auto ymd = date::year_month_day( date::floor<date::days>(now) );
auto ymd_ref = date::year{ymd.year()}/1/1;
int days = (date::sys_days{ymd} - date::sys_days{ymd_ref}).count();
// Get the fractional number of seconds of the day.
auto microseconds = std::chrono::duration_cast<std::chrono::microseconds>(now - date::floor<date::days>(now));
double seconds_since_midnight = 1e-6*microseconds.count();
// Get fractional day number.
std::cout << "Fractional day of the year: " << days + seconds_since_midnight / 86400. << std::endl;
return 0;
}
Good question (upvoted).
I think first we need to decide on what the right answer is. There's your answer, and currently the only other answer is Matteo's. For demonstration purposes, I've modified both answers to substitute in a "fake now" so that we can compare apples to apples:
using namespace std::chrono_literals;
auto now = date::sys_days{date::March/27/2019} + 0h + 32min + 22s + 123456us;
(approximately now at the time I'm writing this)
Chiel's code gives:
Fractional day of the year: 85.0225
Matteo's code gives:
Fractional day of the year: 85.139978280740735
They are close, but not close enough to both be considered right.
Matteo's code works with "average years":
auto this_year = date::floor<date::years>(now);
The length of a date::years is 365.2425 days, which is exactly right if you average all civil years over a 400 year period. And working with the average year length can be very useful, especially when dealing with systems that don't care about human made calendars (e.g. physics or biology).
I'm going to guess that because of the way Chiel's code is written, he would prefer a result that refers more precisely to this specific year. Therefore the code presented below is Chiel's's algorithm, resulting in exactly the same result, only slightly more efficient and concise.
// Get actual time.
auto now = std::chrono::system_clock::now();
// Get the number of days since start of the year.
auto sd = date::floor<date::days>(now);
auto ymd = date::year_month_day( sd );
auto ymd_ref = ymd.year()/1/1;
std::chrono::duration<double, date::days::period> days = sd - date::sys_days{ymd_ref};
// Get the fractional number of seconds of the day.
days += now - sd;
// Get fractional day number.
std::cout << "Fractional day of the year: " << days.count() << std::endl;
The first thing I noted was that date::floor<date::days>(now) was being computed in 3 places, so I'm computing it once and saving it in sd.
Next, since the final answer is a double-based representation of days, I'm going to let <chrono> do that work for me by storing the answer in a duration<double, days>. Any time you find yourself converting units, it is better to let <chrono> do it for you. It probably won't be faster. But it definitely won't be slower, or wrong.
Now it is a simple matter to add the fractional day to the result:
days += now - sd;
using whatever precision now has (microseconds or whatever). And the result is now simply days.count().
Update
And with just a little bit more time to reflect ...
I noticed that with the simplified code above, one can more easily see the entire algorithm as a single expression. That is (removing namespace qualification in order to get everything on one line):
duration<double, days::period> days = sd - sys_days{ymd_ref} + now - sd;
And this clearly algebraically simplifies down to:
duration<double, days::period> days = now - sys_days{ymd_ref};
In summary:
using namespace std::chrono;
using namespace date;
// Get actual time.
auto now = system_clock::now();
// Get the start of the year and subract it from now.
using ddays = duration<double, days::period>;
ddays fd = now - sys_days{year_month_day{floor<days>(now)}.year()/1/1};
// Get fractional day number.
std::cout << "Fractional day of the year: " << fd.count() << '\n';
In this case, letting <chrono> do the conversions for us, allowed the code to be sufficiently simplified such that the algorithm itself could be algebraically simplified, resulting in cleaner and more efficient code that is provably equivalent to the original algorithm in the OP's question.

std::chrono: Set clock's epoch to 1/1/0000

Is it possible to manually set the epoch date/time to the January 1, 0000, so I might use the std::chrono::time_point::time_since_epoch to calculate the difference between a given date and January 1, 0000?
I tried the following:
#include <iostream>
#include <chrono>
#include <ctime>
int main(int argc, char*argv[])
{
std::tm epochStart = {};
epochStart.tm_sec = 0;
epochStart.tm_min = 0;
epochStart.tm_hour = 0;
epochStart.tm_mday = 0;
epochStart.tm_mon = 0;
epochStart.tm_year = -1900;
epochStart.tm_wday = 0;
epochStart.tm_yday = 0;
epochStart.tm_isdst = -1;
std::time_t base = std::mktime(&epochStart);
std::chrono::system_clock::time_point baseTp=
std::chrono::system_clock::from_time_t(base);
std::time_t btp = std::chrono::system_clock::to_time_t(baseTp);
std::cout << "time: " << std::ctime(&btp);
}
but this gives me
time: Thu Jan 1 00:59:59 1970
I would avoid std::time_t altogether. Using days_from_civil from chrono-Compatible Low-Level Date Algorithms, you can immediately compute any difference between std::chrono::system_clock::time_point, and any date in the proleptic Gregorian calendar1.
In addition to days_from_civil which takes a year/month/day triple and converts it into a count of days before/since 1970-01-01 (a chrono-compatible epoch), it is also convenient to create a custom chrono::duration to represent 24 hours:
typedef std::chrono::duration
<
int,
std::ratio_multiply<std::ratio<24>, std::chrono::hours::period>
> days;
Now you can create any epoch you want with just:
constexpr days epoch = days(days_from_civil(0, 1, 1)); // 0000-01-01
In C++1y this is even a compile-time computation!
And you can subtract this std::chrono::duration from any other std::chrono::duration:
auto delta = std::chrono::system_clock::now().time_since_epoch() - epoch;
delta is now a std::chrono::duration representing the amount of time between now, and 0000-01-01. You can then print that out however you want, or otherwise manipulate it. For example here is an entire working demo:
#include "../date_performance/date_algorithms"
#include <iostream>
#include <chrono>
typedef std::chrono::duration
<
int,
std::ratio_multiply<std::ratio<24>, std::chrono::hours::period>
> days;
int
main()
{
constexpr days epoch = days(days_from_civil(0, 1, 1));
auto delta = std::chrono::system_clock::now().time_since_epoch() - epoch;
days d = std::chrono::duration_cast<days>(delta);
std::cout << "It has been " << d.count() << " days, ";
delta -= d;
auto h = std::chrono::duration_cast<std::chrono::hours>(delta);
std::cout << h.count() << " hours, ";
delta -= h;
auto m = std::chrono::duration_cast<std::chrono::minutes>(delta);
std::cout << m.count() << " minutes, ";
delta -= m;
auto s = std::chrono::duration_cast<std::chrono::seconds>(delta);
std::cout << s.count() << " seconds ";
std::cout << " since 0000-01-01\n";
}
Which for me output:
It has been 735602 days, 19 hours, 14 minutes, 32 seconds since 0000-01-01
A word of warning about overflow:
The std::chrono::system_clock::time_point::duration is not guaranteed to have a range large enough to do this. It turns out that on my system it does. It is microseconds in a signed long long which will span +/- 292,000 years. If you need to avoid an overflow problem, you could truncate your std::chrono::system_clock::time_point::duration to courser units (e.g. seconds or days) to extend the range prior to subtracting 0000-01-01.
I got to thinking
And that usually leads to a disaster. However in this case I decided I should add to this post anyway. This:
constexpr days epoch = days(days_from_civil(0, 1, 1));
has type days, which is a duration. But it really isn't a duration. It is a point in time. It is a date. It is a time_point with a coarse precision. By introducing a new typedef, the code in this post can be cleaned up just a little bit more:
typedef std::chrono::time_point<std::chrono::system_clock, days> date_point;
Now instead of writing:
constexpr days epoch = days(days_from_civil(0, 1, 1));
One can write:
constexpr date_point epoch{days(days_from_civil(0, 1, 1))};
But even more importantly, instead of:
auto delta = std::chrono::system_clock::now().time_since_epoch() - epoch;
we can now write:
auto delta = std::chrono::system_clock::now() - epoch;
This delta still has exactly the same type and value as it did previously, and everything else in the demo still proceeds as exactly as it did before.
This is both a small change, and a big change. By treating epoch as a time_point instead of a duration, the algebra of time_point's and duration's works for us, both simplifying and type-checking our expressions to help us write cleaner code with fewer mistakes.
For example one can add two duration's together. But it doesn't make any sense at all to:
epoch + epoch
By using time_point instead of duration for the type of epoch, the compiler catches such non-sensical expressions at compile time.
1The proleptic Gregorian calendar has a year 0. In the year 0 it is 2 days behind the Julian calendar. Using a year 0 is also consistent with ISO 8601. As long as all parties involved know what calendar you are using, then everything is fine. Conversion between non-positive years and "BC years" is trivial if desired.
It's possible, the code you've given (minus a small fix, tm_mday starts with 1) yields:
Sat Jan 1 00:00:00 0
Live example
The real problem is: Are you on 32-bit or 64-bit? With a 32-bit system, time_t is also only 32 bits and you are limited to 1970 +/- 68 years.
On a 64-bit system, the limits are given by std::mktime and std::strftime, in my own code I have unit test for those strings and the corresponding values:
"-2147481748-01-01 00:00:00" maps to -67768040609740800
"2147483647-12-31 23:59:59" maps to 67767976233532799
I should probably also mention that there are systems where the above does not work because the underlying OS functions are buggy. For the record: I'm on Linux.
No. mktime and friends are based on UNIX time, which starts on 1st January 1970.
There is in fact no such thing as 0th January, 0000, so it seems likely that you would be better off finding another way to solve whatever is your actual problem.

utc seconds since midnight to datetime

I'm getting radar data as "tracks" and the track data indicates the number of UTC seconds since the last midnight, apparently. This is not the number of seconds since the 1st of jan 1970.
Now I want to convert that to date time, knowing that the clock on the computer could be slightly out of sync with the clock on the radar. I'll assume the radar's seconds are the reference, not the computer's.
I want to convert these seconds to a full date time. Things seem to be a little tricky around
midnight.
Any suggestions? I've got some ideas, but I don't want to miss anything.
I'm working with C++ Qt.
// Function to extend truncated time, given the wall time and period, all
// in units of seconds.
//
// Example: Suppose the truncated period was one hour, and you were
// given a truncated time of 25 minutes after the hour. Then:
//
// o Actual time of 07:40:00 results in 07:25:00 (07:40 + -15)
// o Actual time of 07:10:00 results in 07:25:00 (07:10 + +15)
// o Actual time of 07:56:00 results in 08:25:00 (07:56 + +29)
double extendTruncatedTime(double trunc, double wall, int period) {
return wall + remainder(trunc - wall, period);
}
#define extendTruncatedTime24(t) extendTruncatedTime(t, time(0), 24 * 60 * 60)
Some commentary:
The units of wall are seconds, but its base can be arbitrary. In Unix, it typically starts at 1970.
Leap seconds are not relevant here.
You need #include <math.h> for remainder().
The period in extendTruncatedTime() is almost always twenty-four hours, 24 * 60 * 60, as per the OP's request. That is, given the time of day, it extends it by adding the year, month, and day of month, based on the 'wall' time.
The only exception I know to the previous statement is, since you mention radar, is in the Asterix CAT 1 data item I001/141, where the period is 512 seconds, and for which extendTruncatedTime() as given doesn't quite work.
And there is another important case which extendTruncatedTime() doesn't cover. Suppose you are given a truncated time consisting of the day of month, hour, and minute. How can you fill in the year and the month?
The following code snippet adds the year and month to a time derived from a DDHHMM format:
time_t extendTruncatedTimeDDHHMM(time_t trunc, time_t wall) {
struct tm retval = *gmtime_r(&trunc, &retval);
struct tm now = *gmtime_r(&wall, &now);
retval.tm_year = now.tm_year;
retval.tm_mon = now.tm_mon;
retval.tm_mon += now.tm_mday - retval.tm_mday > 15; // 15 = half-month
retval.tm_mon -= now.tm_mday - retval.tm_mday < -15;
return timegm(&retval);
}
As written, this doesn't handle erroneous inputs. For example, if today is July 4th, then the non-nonsensical 310000 will be quietly converted to July 1st. (This may be a feature, not a bug.)
If you can link against another lib, i'd suggest to use boost::date_time.
It seems you want to take current date in seconds from midnight (epoch) then add the radar time to it, then convert the sum back to a date time, and transform it into a string.
Using boost will help you in:
getting the right local time
calculating the date back
incorporating the drift into the calculation
taking leap seconds into account
since you'll have concept like time intervals and durations at your disposal. You can use something like (from the boost examples):
ptime t4(date(2002,May,31), hours(20)); //4 hours b/f midnight NY time
ptime t5 = us_eastern::local_to_utc(t4);
std::cout << to_simple_string(t4) << " in New York is "
<< to_simple_string(t5) << " UTC time "
<< std::endl;
If you want to calculate the drift by hand you can do time math easily similar to constructs like this:
ptime t2 = t1 - hours(5)- minutes(4)- seconds(2)- millisec(1);
I had the exact same problem but I'm using C#. My implementation is included here if anyone needs the solution in C#. This does not incorporate any clock drift.
DateTime UTCTime = DateTime.UtcNow.Date.AddSeconds(secondSinceMidnightFromRadar);

hour, minutes,seconds to Time_t

I know the Current system time.
I know the estimated time of arrival of a place in the form of hours minutes and seconds.
I need to find the duration of travel. But the estimated time of arrival is in 12 hour format.
I have to write a program to find the time difference between these two ?
I thought of using difftime(time1,time2)
but this requires the datatype time_t. I know the time in parts. i.e. i know the hours, minutes and seconds separatley. Both current system time and Estimated time of arrival.
I need to find the time difference between the two. The ETA can be after 24 hours. then is there any way i can find out the number of days of travel. Because after 12PM time is set back. hence i'm not able to keep track of the days.
Any solution ?
I work on C++
A straight forward way using C/C++. This is not very robust, but should meet your given requirements.
#include <ctime>
tm source;
memset(&source, 0, sizeof(tm));
tm.tm_hour = hour; // 24 hour format, 0 = midnight, 23 = 11pm
tm.tm_min = min;
tm.tm_sec = sec;
tm.tm_mon = month; // 0 based, 0 = jan, 11 = dec
tm.tm_mday = 10;
tm.tm.year = year; // current - 1900
time_t src_t = mktime(&source);
time_t now = time(NULL);