Function similar to LocalFileTimeToFileTime in Linux!

Jayaraghavendran · 07-13-2007, 08:55 AM

Hi,

There is a function names LocalFileTimeToFileTime in Windows which converts a local time to a file time based on the coordinated universal time.

Is there a similar function available in Linux or Linux flavour Operating Systems?

Can we implement the same? If somebody has a sample implementation, please post it.

Thanks in Advance!

Regards,
Jay

wjevans_7d1@yahoo.co · 07-13-2007, 12:52 PM

If I guess correctly what the Windows function is for, it is unnecessary and inapplicable for *nix systems. For *nix systems, file modification/access times are stored on disk as the number of non-leap seconds since the midnight at the beginning of 1 January 1970 UTC. It is only when they are displayed that the info is converted to local time (and broken down into year/month/day/hour/minute).

You can cause the ls command to display modification times in different time zones (including UTC, as in this example) thus:

Code:

wally:~/test1$ date
Fri Jul 13 10:51:02 PDT 2007
wally:~/test1$ ls -l
total 0
-rw-------    1 wally    wally           0 Jul 13 10:51 typescript
wally:~/test1$ export TZ=UTC
wally:~/test1$ date
Fri Jul 13 17:51:14 UTC 2007
wally:~/test1$ ls -l
total 0
-rw-------    1 wally    wally           0 Jul 13 17:51 typescript
wally:~/test1$ unset TZ
wally:~/test1$ date
Fri Jul 13 10:51:20 PDT 2007
wally:~/test1$ ls -l
total 0
-rw-------    1 wally    wally           0 Jul 13 10:51 typescript
wally:~/test1$

But notice that this affects not only the ls command, but practically everything that displays some form of date/time, including the date command.

Hope this helps.