How do I compare two timestamps in C?

Question

I'm writing a socket program that maintains FIFO queues for two input sockets. When deciding which queue to service, the program pulls the most recent time-stamp from each queue.

I need a reliable method for comparing two timeval structs. I tried using timercmp(), but my version of gcc doesn't support it, and documentation states that the function is not POSIX compliant.

What should I do?

Solution 1

googling timeval give this first result. From that page:

It is often necessary to subtract two values of type struct timeval or struct timespec. Here is the best way to do this. It works even on some peculiar operating systems where the tv_sec member has an unsigned type.

 /* Subtract the `struct timeval' values X and Y,
    storing the result in RESULT.
    Return 1 if the difference is negative, otherwise 0.  */
 int
 timeval_subtract (result, x, y)
      struct timeval *result, *x, *y;
 {
   /* Perform the carry for the later subtraction by updating y. */
   if (x->tv_usec < y->tv_usec) {
     int nsec = (y->tv_usec - x->tv_usec) / 1000000 + 1;
     y->tv_usec -= 1000000 * nsec;
     y->tv_sec += nsec;
   }
   if (x->tv_usec - y->tv_usec > 1000000) {
     int nsec = (x->tv_usec - y->tv_usec) / 1000000;
     y->tv_usec += 1000000 * nsec;
     y->tv_sec -= nsec;
   }
   /* Compute the time remaining to wait.
      tv_usec is certainly positive. */
   result->tv_sec = x->tv_sec - y->tv_sec;
   result->tv_usec = x->tv_usec - y->tv_usec;
   /* Return 1 if result is negative. */
   return x->tv_sec < y->tv_sec;
 }

Solution 2

timercmp() is just a macro in libc (sys/time.h):

# define timercmp(a, b, CMP)                                                  \
  (((a)->tv_sec == (b)->tv_sec) ?                                             \
   ((a)->tv_usec CMP (b)->tv_usec) :                                          \
   ((a)->tv_sec CMP (b)->tv_sec))

If you need timersub():

# define timersub(a, b, result)                                               \
  do {                                                                        \
    (result)->tv_sec = (a)->tv_sec - (b)->tv_sec;                             \
    (result)->tv_usec = (a)->tv_usec - (b)->tv_usec;                          \
    if ((result)->tv_usec < 0) {                                              \
      --(result)->tv_sec;                                                     \
      (result)->tv_usec += 1000000;                                           \
    }                                                                         \
  } while (0)

Comments

[Eugene Bujak]

Needs defining _BSD_SOURCE macro if compiling on Linux.