Time stamp in the C programming language

Question

How do I stamp two times t1 and t2 and get the difference in milliseconds in C?

Answer 1

Use gettimeofday() or better clock_gettime()

Answer 2

/*
 Returns the current time.
*/

char *time_stamp(){

char *timestamp = (char *)malloc(sizeof(char) * 16);
time_t ltime;
ltime=time(NULL);
struct tm *tm;
tm=localtime(&ltime);

sprintf(timestamp,"%04d%02d%02d%02d%02d%02d", tm->tm_year+1900, tm->tm_mon, 
    tm->tm_mday, tm->tm_hour, tm->tm_min, tm->tm_sec);
return timestamp;
}


int main(){

printf(" Timestamp: %s\n",time_stamp());
return 0;

}

Output: Timestamp: 20110912130940 // 2011 Sep 12 13:09:40

Answer 3

Standard C99:

#include <time.h>

time_t t0 = time(0);
// ...
time_t t1 = time(0);
double datetime_diff_ms = difftime(t1, t0) * 1000.;

clock_t c0 = clock();
// ...
clock_t c1 = clock();
double runtime_diff_ms = (c1 - c0) * 1000. / CLOCKS_PER_SEC;

The precision of the types is implementation-defined, ie the datetime difference might only return full seconds.