Is there any better method of displaying wall clock time except using walltimestamp variable?

Question

I want to print the time when a probe is fired. After checking the Dtrace documents, I find the built-in variable: `walltimestamp`. And the Dtrace script likes this: ``` pid$1::func:entry { trace(walltimestamp); } ``` But the `walltimestamp` is "The current number of nanoseconds since 00:00 Universal Coordinated Time, January 1, 1970.", so the output likes "1389583988106535481". I think this isn't easy for user to understand and want the output likes "Mon Jan 13 00:00:00 2014". I have searched whether Dtrace provide functions like `ctime` in C programming language, but nothing found. Does anyone need to implement a function like ctime by himself? Or Is there any better method to display the time?

Accepted Answer

Use `printf()`:

```
# dtrace -qn 'BEGIN {printf("%Y
", walltimestamp); exit(0)}'
2014 Jan 13 08:37:56

#
```

Is there any better method of displaying wall clock time except using walltimestamp variable?

Solution

Problem