How to format date and time string in C++
c++, datetime, mfc
Solution
The C library includes `strftime` specifically for formatting dates/times. The format you're asking for seems to correspond to something like this:
char buffer[256];
strftime(buffer, sizeof(buffer), "%a %b %d %H:%M:%S %Y", &your_tm);
I believe `std::put_time` uses a similar format string, though it does relieve you of having to explicitly deal with a buffer. If you want to write the output to a stream, it's quite convenient, but to get it into a string it's not a lot of help -- you'd have to do something like:
std::stringstream buffer;
buffer << std::put_time(&your_tm, "%a %b %d %H:%M:%S %Y");
// now the result is in `buffer.str()`.
`std::put_time` is new with C++11, but C++03 has a `time_put` facet in a locale that can do the same thing. If memory serves, I did manage to make it work once, but after that decided it wasn't worth the trouble, and I haven't done it since.
Problem
Let's say I have time_t and tm structure. I can't use Boost but MFC. How can I make it a string like following? ``` Mon Apr 23 17:48:14 2012 ``` Is using sprintf the only way?