Question

I have a variable: char date[11];, and I need to put inside it the current date, for example 29/06/2012.

So I’ll do something like:

printf ("%s\n", date);

And the output would be: 29/06/2012

I only found the option to print the date in words, like Fri, June 2012, but not the actual date in numbers.

So how can I print the current date in numbers?

Answer 1

You can reference this function strftime. I’ll let you figure out how to use it 🙂

Since you claimed that you have searched for it, I’ll provide the answer:

// first of all, you need to include time.h
#include<time.h>

int main() {

  // then you'll get the raw time from the low level "time" function
  time_t raw;
  time(&raw);

  // if you notice, "strftime" takes a "tm" structure.
  // that's what we'll be doing: convert "time_t" to "tm"
  struct tm *time_ptr;
  time_ptr = localtime(&raw);

  // now with the "tm", you can format it to a buffer
  char date[11];
  strftime(date, 11, "%d/%m/%Y", time_ptr);

  printf("Today is: %s\n", date);
}