getting the time....

[Ginger Booth]

Hi, Swarmfolk,

    I have a Not-Deep problem.  I want to simply get the current time string
(the date, in English) to add as a comment to my output files (Program Version
Ran Date).  On my system, the following works:

    char* timeString()
    {
        // there ought to be an easier way....
        int timeofday;
        struct timeval tp;
    
        timeofday = gettimeofday (&tp, (struct timezone *) 0);
    
        return( ctime ( &tp.tv_sec));
    }

But apparently this isn't very portable. I don't care how I do it, but feel 
it needs to be done.  What's a "standard" Unix way to do it?

Thanks!
    Ginger