C++ - Comparing only time - c++

Is there a way to only compare time in C++?
For instance, given a array of predefined time (in string, e.g. "04:00", "07:00", "13:00") I want to be able to compare the current time with the range of time given in the array to see which fits.
I have tried strptime but I keep getting the undefined error. I have included time.h and stdio.h.
#include <stdio.h>
#include <ctime>
#include <time.h>
int main() {
//GET CURRENT TIME
time_t now = time(0);
tm *ltm = localtime(&now);
cout << "Time: "<< ltm->tm_hour << ":";
cout << ltm->tm_min << ":";
cout << ltm->tm_sec << endl;
//TRYING TO CONVERT THE TIME FROM STRING TO PROCEED FOR FURTHER COMPARISON
struct tm tm;
std::string s("04:00");
if (strptime(s.c_str(), "%H:%M", &tm)) { //error strptime is undefined
int d = tm.tm_mday,
m = tm.tm_mon + 1,
y = tm.tm_year + 1900;
std::cout << y << "-" << m << "-" << d << " "
<< tm.tm_hour << ":" << tm.tm_min;
}
//ATTEMPT TO DO TIME COMPARISON HERE
}
Am I missing out on any library?
Is there an easier/alternate way to do this?
Please guide me. Thanks

Timestamps from your example all have the same fixed format: two-digit hours, colon, two-digit minutes.
Which means they are perfectly subject to lexicographic comparison, via operator< on std::strings, std::strcmp, std::strncmp, std::memcmp, and so forth.

Related

Getting Current Date inside a C++ process running 24*7

I have a backend process running 24*7 mostly built using C++ and I need to validate if an input date (in format YYYYMMDD) belongs in a set of next 5 business days. The input date is not a clear indicator of the current date so I am using the following function to get the current date and then calculating the next 5 business days from it.
const std::string& CurrentDateStr() {
static const std::string sDate = []() {
time_t currTime = time(NULL);
struct tm timeinfo;
localtime_r(&currTime, &timeinfo);
char buffer[16]="";
strftime(buffer, sizeof(buffer), "%Y%m%d", &timeinfo);
return std::string(buffer);
} ();
return sDate;
}
This function returns me the correct current date if the process was started today but if the process continues running till tomorrow then it will return me yesterday's date as current date due to which calculation of next 5 business days from current date goes for a toss.
Is this expected ? Is there some workaround for it or is there a better way to implement the requirement using standard C++
Your issue is the static variable. You should read up on that, because you're going to encounter it a lot. This is what the comments were trying to get you to do. You can fix your issue by just removing it:
const std::string& CurrentDateStr() {
time_t currTime = time(NULL);
struct tm timeinfo;
localtime_r(&currTime, &timeinfo);
char buffer[16]="";
strftime(buffer, sizeof(buffer), "%Y%m%d", &timeinfo);
return std::string(buffer);
}
For a more modern solution, as suggested in the comments as well, read up on chrono. Especially system_clock::now().
one way to do it using chrono:
#include <iostream>
#include <ctime>
#include <chrono>
#include <thread>
int main()
{
while (true)
{
theTime currentTime = time(nullptr);
tm* date = gmtime(&currentTime);
// Print the date and time
std::cout << "Current date and time: " << date->theDay << "/" << date->theMon + 1 << "/" << date->theYear + 1900;
std::cout << " " << date->theHour << ":" << date->theMmin << ":" << date->theSec << std::endl;
// Wait for 1 minute
std::this_thread::sleep_for(std::chrono::minutes(1));
}
}
OR Use the sleep method.
#include <iostream>
#include <ctime>
#include <unistd.h>
int main()
{
while (true)
{
time_t currentTime = time(nullptr);
tm* date = gmtime(&currentTime);
std::cout << "Current date and time: " << date->tm_mday << "/" << date->tm_mon + 1 << "/" << date->tm_year + 1900;
std::cout << " " << date->tm_hour << ":" << date->tm_min << std::endl;
// Wait for 1 minute (60 seconds)
sleep(60);
}
}

Problem when converting from time_t to tm then back to time_t

I have a time_t value of 1530173696 which represents Thursday, June 28, 2018 8:14:56 AM.
I want to round down the time to the nearest hour. Specifically, down to 1530172800, which represent Thursday, June 28, 2018 8:00:00 AM. So, my idea is to convert this time_t to a tm struct, and then assign its sec and min values to 0.
However, after I do that, and after I convert the modified tm back to a time_t value, the value I get is way off. I get a value of 1530158400 which represents Thursday, June 28, 2018 4:00:00 AM. That's 4 hours off. Even checking values of up to 8:59:59 AM still gives the rounded down value of 4:00:00 AM.
I wrote the code below to demonstrate the problem. I use VisulStudio 2017.
I don't understand what I am doing wrong. I appreciate any help. Thanks.
#include <iostream>
#include <time.h>
bool equalTMs(tm& tm1, tm& tm2);
void printTM(tm& myTM);
int main()
{
tm myTM;
time_t datetime = 1530173696;
//datetime = 1530176399; // to check the time_t value of 8:59 AM
gmtime_s(&myTM, &datetime);
myTM.tm_sec = 0;
myTM.tm_min = 0;
time_t myTime_T = mktime(&myTM);
tm sanityCheckTM;
time_t roundedDownToNearestHour = 1530172800;
gmtime_s(&sanityCheckTM, &roundedDownToNearestHour);
time_t sanityCheckTimeT = mktime(&sanityCheckTM);
std::cout << "datetime: " << datetime << std::endl;
std::cout << "myTime_T: " << myTime_T << std::endl;
std::cout << std::endl;
std::cout << "roundedDownToNearestHour: " << roundedDownToNearestHour << std::endl;
std::cout << "sanityCheckTimeT: " << sanityCheckTimeT << std::endl;
std::cout << std::endl;
std::cout << "myTM and sanityCheckTM equal? " << (equalTMs(myTM, sanityCheckTM) ? "true" : "false") << std::endl;
std::cout << "\nmyTM:-\n\n";
printTM(myTM);
std::cout << "\nsanityCheckTM:-\n\n";
printTM(sanityCheckTM);
std::cout << "\n";
time_t _time_t = 1530158400;
tm _tm;
gmtime_s(&_tm, &_time_t);
std::cout << "_time_t: " << _time_t << std::endl;
std::cout << "_tm and sanityCheckTM equal? " << (equalTMs(_tm, sanityCheckTM) ? "true" : "false") << std::endl;
std::cout << "\n_tm:-\n\n";
printTM(_tm);
}
void printTM(tm& myTM)
{
std::cout << "tm_sec: " << myTM.tm_sec << std::endl;
std::cout << "tm_min: " << myTM.tm_min << std::endl;
std::cout << "tm_hour: " << myTM.tm_hour << std::endl;
std::cout << "tm_mday: " << myTM.tm_mday << std::endl;
std::cout << "tm_mon: " << myTM.tm_mon << std::endl;
std::cout << "tm_year: " << myTM.tm_year << std::endl;
std::cout << "tm_wday: " << myTM.tm_wday << std::endl;
std::cout << "tm_yday: " << myTM.tm_yday << std::endl;
std::cout << "tm_isdst: " << myTM.tm_isdst << std::endl;
}
bool equalTMs(tm& tm1, tm& tm2)
{
return (tm1.tm_sec == tm2.tm_sec)
&& (tm1.tm_min == tm2.tm_min)
&& (tm1.tm_hour == tm2.tm_hour)
&& (tm1.tm_mday == tm2.tm_mday)
&& (tm1.tm_mon == tm2.tm_mon)
&& (tm1.tm_year == tm2.tm_year)
&& (tm1.tm_wday == tm2.tm_wday)
&& (tm1.tm_yday == tm2.tm_yday)
&& (tm1.tm_isdst == tm2.tm_isdst);
}
gmtime_s() returns a tm that is expressed in UTC time. You pass that to mktime(), which expects the tm to be expressed in LOCAL time instead. Your StackOverflow profile says you are located in Abu Dhabi, whose time zone is GMT+4. That is why you have a 4-hour discrepancy.
Use localtime_s() instead of gmtime_s().
Since 1530173696 is being used as a Unix Time (UTC excluding leap seconds), this can be solved without involving time zones.
Howard Hinnant's date/time library can be used to solve this problem, and to check that you're getting the right answer. However, skip to the end of this answer if you want to see how to do this very simply without the use of any library at all.
1530173696 is a count of seconds since 1970-01-01 UTC. If you want to convert this into a human readable date/time, one can:
#include "date/date.h"
#include <iostream>
int
main()
{
time_t datetime = 1530173696;
date::sys_seconds tp{std::chrono::seconds{datetime}};
using date::operator<<;
std::cout << tp << '\n';
}
which outputs:
2018-06-28 08:14:56
This does nothing but validate the input. Furthermore tp is nothing more than a std::chrono::time_point based on system_clock but with a precision of seconds. You can round this down to the hour with:
tp = floor<std::chrono::hours>(tp);
Here floor can be grabbed from "date.h" under namespace date, or if you have C++17 or later, you can use std::chrono::floor. You can use "date.h" to print tp out again and you will get:
2018-06-28 08:00:00
(as desired). To turn this back into a time_t, simply extract the duration, and then the count:
time_t myTime_T = tp.time_since_epoch().count();
This will have the value 1530172800 as expected.
Finally, if you do not need to print these time stamps out in a human readable form, you can do the math quite easily yourself:
time_t myTime_T = datetime / 3600 * 3600;
This is essentially the same operation as:
tp = floor<std::chrono::hours>(tp);
except that the floor version will continue to get the correct answer when the input is negative (a timestamp prior to 1970-01-01 00:00:00 UTC). The "manual" implementation will round up to the next hour when given a negative input.

How to append system time to a string variable

#include<iostream>
#include<ctime>
#include<string>
using namespace std;
int main()
{
string NowTime;
time_t now;
struct tm nowLocal;
now=time(NULL); // get the time from the OS
nowLocal=*localtime(&now);
NowTime = nowLocal.tm_hour + ':' + nowLocal.tm_min + ':' + nowLocal.tm_sec;
cout<< NowTime;
}
When I run the program, it display nothing, can someone help me? I am totally new in programming.
If you try
cout << nowLocal.tm_hour + ':' + nowLocal.tm_min + ':' + nowLocal.tm_sec;
you'll see an integer, not anything resembling a time.
This is because it's the sum of five integers - the characters are promoted to integers, and then it's all added up.
The simplest fix is to not build a string at all but to output the parts individually:
cout << nowLocal.tm_hour << ':' << nowLocal.tm_min << ':' << nowLocal.tm_sec;
Otherwise, you need to convert those numbers to strings:
NowTime = std::to_string(nowLocal.tm_hour) + ':' + std::to_string(nowLocal.tm_min) + ':' + std::to_string(nowLocal.tm_sec);
or, you can use a std::ostringstream, which works just like std::cout and other streams, but writes to a std::string:
std::ostringstream ss;
ss << nowLocal.tm_hour << ':' << nowLocal.tm_min << ':' << nowLocal.tm_sec;
NowTime = ss.str();
The line:
NowTime = nowLocal.tm_hour + ':' + nowLocal.tm_min + ':' + nowLocal.tm_sec;
is adding the hour, minute, and second to the numeric value of the colon symbol, since char is implicitly coerced to an int. That value is then being interpreted as a char in the string assignment operator.
Instead, you can simply output the values directly to cout. They will be formatted appropriately by cout's stream insertion operator <<.
#include<iostream>
#include<ctime>
#include<string>
using namespace std;
int main()
{
string NowTime;
time_t now;
tm nowLocal;
now=time(NULL); // get the time from the OS
nowLocal=*localtime(&now);
cout << nowLocal.tm_hour << ':' << nowLocal.tm_min << ':' << nowLocal.tm_sec;
return 0;
}
If you would instead want to store them in a string, read up about stringstreams. They have a similar syntax to cout and can make formatting strings much easier.
Instead of having to put the result in a variable, you could output it like this:
cout << nowLocal.tm_hour << ':' << nowLocal.tm_min << ':' << nowLocal.tm_sec;
Live Example
Also, if you want to keep the variable, do this:
NowTime = std::to_string(nowLocal.tm_hour) + ':' + std::to_string(nowLocal.tm_min) + ':' + std::to_string(nowLocal.tm_sec);
cout << NowTime;
Try this:
#include<iostream>
#include<ctime>
#include<string>
#include <sstream>
using namespace std;
int main()
{
string NowTime;
time_t now;
struct tm nowLocal;
now=time(NULL); // get the time from the OS
nowLocal=*localtime(&now);
stringstream s;
s<<nowLocal.tm_hour;
s<<":";
s<<nowLocal.tm_min;
s<<":";
s<<nowLocal.tm_sec;
NowTime = s.str();
cout<< NowTime;
}
You cannot cas directly from int to string and you need put values into stream and then to string.
What about using iostringstream to build the string you want?
#include<iostream>
#include<ctime>
#include<string>
#include <sstream>
using namespace std;
int main()
{
ostringstream NowTime;
time_t now;
struct tm nowLocal;
now=time(NULL); // get the time from the OS
nowLocal=*localtime(&now);
NowTime << nowLocal.tm_hour << ":" << nowLocal.tm_min << ":" << nowLocal.tm_sec;
cout<< NowTime.str() << endl;
}
Or for the purposes of your program you could simple use std::cout which also happens to be an output stream.
cout << nowLocal.tm_hour << ":" << nowLocal.tm_min << ":" << nowLocal.tm_sec << endl;
Since it looks like you're pre-c++11 and can't use std::to_string. Here's a C-like way of doing it, sticking to the includes you're currently using.
#include<iostream>
#include<ctime>
#include<string>
using namespace std;
#define STR_LEN 128
int main()
{
string nowTime;
time_t now;
struct tm nowLocal;
now = time( NULL ); // get the time from the OS
nowLocal = *localtime( &now );
char hour[ STR_LEN ], min[ STR_LEN ], sec[ STR_LEN ];
sprintf( hour, "%d", nowLocal.tm_hour );
sprintf( min, "%d", nowLocal.tm_min );
sprintf( sec, "%d", nowLocal.tm_sec );
nowTime = string( hour ) + ':' + string( min ) + ':' + string( sec );
cout << nowTime << endl;
}
How append system time to a string?
My answer is to build a convenience function.
If you really only need hour, minute, second, then you need not use the relatively slow localtime(). (on the other hand, if you do need more, I think you should prefer localtime_r() for the conversion).
For an embedded system several contracts back, I found this conversion to be a relatively slow function and chose to avoid it. The algorithms to handle leap days, centuries, etc. appear simple enough. I suspect I considered it slow simply because it calculates more than I needed in that application that was trying to do the conversion many times per second.
There exists a simpler (and probably still faster) approach involving modular arithmetic. It starts the same - with a time(0) (and thus I suspect what I am doing here is 'hidden' in the localtime_r() function). Side note 1 - on my older Dell running Ubuntu 15.10, time(0) is simply the fastest access to the wall clock, measuring about 6 or 7 ns 'typical' duration. Side note 2 - time_t may change someday. "The time_t Wikipedia article article sheds some light on this. The bottom line is that the type of time_t is not guaranteed in the C specification."
The code I currently use to conveniently generate a time stamp string:
std::string hhCmmCssGet(time_t tt = 0) // tt has default value
{
time_t now = ( tt ? tt : time(0) );
static time_t prev = 0;
static char hhmmss[] = "hh:mm:ss";
if (prev != now)
{
prev = now;
const int32_t CST = -6;
int64_t hr = ((now / 3600) % 24) + CST; // hr of day, CST offset
if (hr < 0) hr += 24;
uint64_t min = ((now / 60) % 60); // min of day
uint64_t sec = (now % 60); // sec of day
std::stringstream ss;
ss << std::dec
<< std::setfill('0') << std::setw(2) << hr << ":"
<< std::setfill('0') << std::setw(2) << min << ":"
<< std::setfill('0') << std::setw(2) << sec;
for (size_t i=0; i<8; i++) // transfer new value
hhmmss[i] = ss.str()[i]; // into static hhmmss
}
std::string retVal(hhmmss);
return(retVal);
}
The static items and "if (prev != now)" clause, allow this function to be invoked thousands of times per second ... with much reduced effort. The second, after all, only updates 1ce per second. And note that the std::stringstream stuff and modular arithmetic operations only run 1ce per second.

using strptime converting string to time but getting garbage

I have a problem with using strptime() function in c++.
I found a piece of code in stackoverflow like below and I want to store string time information on struct tm. Although I should get year information on my tm tm_year variable, I always get a garbage.Is there anyone to help me ? Thanks in advance.
string s = dtime;
struct tm timeDate;
memset(&timeDate,0,sizeof(struct tm));
strptime(s.c_str(),"%Y-%m-%d %H:%M", &timeDate);
cout<<timeDate.tm_year<<endl; // in the example below it gives me 113
cout<<timeDate.tm_min<<endl; // it returns garbage
**string s will be like "2013-12-04 15:03"**
cout<<timeDate.tm_year<<endl; // in the example below it gives me 113
it is supposed to give you value decreased by 1900 so if it gives you 113 it means the year is 2013. Month will also be decreased by 1, i.e. if it gives you 1, it is actually February. Just add these values:
#include <iostream>
#include <sstream>
#include <ctime>
int main() {
struct tm tm{};
std::string s("2013-12-04 15:03");
if (strptime(s.c_str(), "%Y-%m-%d %H:%M", &tm)) {
int d = tm.tm_mday,
m = tm.tm_mon + 1,
y = tm.tm_year + 1900;
std::cout << y << "-" << m << "-" << d << " "
<< tm.tm_hour << ":" << tm.tm_min;
}
}
outputs 2013-12-4 15:3

std::cout shows hex on the screen instead of text

I get system time like this:
time_t t = time(0);
struct tm* now = localtime(&t);
TCHAR* tInfo = new TCHAR[256];
swprintf_s(tInfo
, 256
, _T("Current time: %i:%i:%i")
, now->tm_hour
, now->tm_min
, now->tm_sec);
And then show on screen:
std::cout << tInfo << std::endl;
But insted of Current time: 12:57:56 I got: 0x001967a8 on the screen. What I did wrong ?
You are trying to print a "wide" string. You need to use :
std::wcout << tInfo << std::endl;
The "narrow" version cout doesn't know about "wide" characters, so will just print the address, just like if you tried to print some other random pointer type.
Try:
std::wcout << tInfo << std::endl;
C++ shares its date/time functions with C. The tm structure is probably the easiest for a C++ programmer to work with - the following prints today's date:
#include <ctime>
#include <iostream>
using namespace std;
int main() {
time_t t = time(0); // get time now
struct tm * now = localtime( & t );
cout << (now->tm_year + 1900) << '-'
<< (now->tm_mon + 1) << '-'
<< now->tm_mday
<< endl;
}