Displaying the clock using C

[rakesh_01]

Hi guys,

I'm supposed to display a clock using a C program.I looked up a few date and time functions in C and came up with this program...

#include <stdio.h>
#include <time.h>

#define SIZE 256
int main()
{
char buffer[SIZE];
time_t curtime;
struct tm *loctime;
curtime = time(NULL);

loctime=localtime(&curtime);
strftime(buffer,SIZE,"%a,%b, %I:%M:%S %p",&loctime);
fputs(buffer,stdout);
}

However all this ever does is that it displays the Hour:Minutes:Seconds in a sort of static fashion.

I would like it to be dynamic and more of a clock.

Can someone help me out with the solution

[Rubberman]

Are you trying to learn C programming on your own, or is this for a class?

[rakesh_01]

No it is not a class exercise.....Its actually part of a project.....

[Rubberman]

So, besides such a general description of your "task", why don't you post your desired output characteristics (requirements) here. Do note that main() is a function that returns an integer and you are not returning anything - return a 0 value at the very least. In any case, your code only gets the current date+time and displays it once. If you want a real updating clock, especially one that keeps the date+time displayed at a particular location on either the screen or on a terminal, then you need to put your code in a loop, display it using some screen formatting library such as ncurses (terminal) or Qt/wxWin/GTK+/etc (GUI desktop display), sleep some period of time, and then repeat the loop. You can see the code for the xclock easily enough for a raw xlib version that does just this.

[rakesh_01]

Thanks for your advice.

I looked up a few manuals on ncurses but still couldn't get a very good idea on it.It would be nice if you could help me out with a program to illustrate this.

Thanks.

[Rubberman]

First, read the man pages. O'Reilly Publishing has a Nutshell book on ncurses programming. You can also find some example programs that use it on the net - try google.