C++ struct tm & time_t

Question

I have an array of time here:

struct cl{
    unsigned char *buffer;
    time_t t = time(0);  
    struct tm * ct = localtime(&t);
};

and then:

cl sadi[10];

But for example I got sadi[5] at 21:58, and when I got a sadi[6] at 21:59. Then I check again all my sadi[].ct->tm_min are 59. What is the problem with that? Is that it can't hold the moment that you capture it, will it always update ? If so, how can I capture the moment of time and it not update like that.

Answer 1

This line:

struct tm* ct = localtime(&t);

The problem is that the pointer that localtime(&t) returns is a static internal buffer. So it returns exactly the same pointer value (address) every time it is called. That means that all your array elements have pointers to the same struct tm object.

One solution is to make a copy of the data each time you call localtime:

struct cl {
    unsigned char* buffer;
    time_t t = time(0);  
    struct tm ct = *localtime(&t);
};

So now I declare struct tm ct; (not a pointer) and initialize it with the dereferenced value of the returned pointer *localtime(&t).