time() Function Error

[Ag2000]

It is an error with a function or my understanding
When I use the time() function to capture the time, sleep(5) seconds, and capture the time again, the difference between between the two times is 1 hour and 5 seconds.

Code: Select all

<?php
$start_time = time();
$format = "%T";
$stime = strftime($format, $start_time);
print "Start Time: $stime<br>";
// do something that takes time
print "<br>doing something<br><br>";
sleep(5);
$stop_time = time();
$stime = strftime($format, $stop_time);
print "Stop Time: $stime<br>";
$dif_time = $stop_time - $start_time;
$strtime = strftime("%T", $dif_time);
print "Difference: $strtime <br>";
?>

results in:

Start Time: 22:42:46

doing something

Stop Time: 22:42:51
Difference: 01:00:05

[Ag2000]

Forgot, Windows 11 and XAMPP 8.2.12. Which I see can be implied ------------------------------------>

[Nobbie]

Its not a function error, its your misunderstanding.

The time() returns the number of seconds which have passed since 1. January 1970. If you build the difference between two time() calls, it gives you the number of seconds between the two calls. You may simply print the difference. Instead you pass that difference to a function, which calculates the date and time from the number of seconds, which have passed since 1. January 1970 (probably starting at 1 o clock). You pass 5 seconds to that function. Thats plain nonsense.

The difference of two dates is not a date, got it? But its that what you are calculating.

[Ag2000]

Its not a function error, its your misunderstanding.

The expected result. I was mindlessly trying to avoid the code to format 2-3 hrs of seconds to hrs/minutes/seconds.
While reading to improve understanding I see strftime() is deprecated and I should be using date().
To do the formatting I wanted I also see that using

Code: Select all

date_default_timezone_set('Etc/GMT');

does what I want without several divides by 60. Setting the time zone results in

Difference: 00:00:05

The actual time of day is a don't care. Thanks for the head slap.

[Nobbie]

without several divides by 60

But thats the way to go.

Code: Select all

<?php

        $diff = 1235;  // Insert any test value here

        $seconds = (int) $diff;

        $minutes = (int) ($seconds/60);
        $seconds %= 60;

        $hours  = (int) ($minutes/60);
        $minutes %= 60;

        printf("%02d:%02d:%02d", $hours, $minutes, $seconds);
?>


[Ag2000]

Or think about it this way:
By subtracting the start_time from the stop_time the difference is: 1) the elapsed time and/or 2) a number, Unix timestamps, that represents the number of seconds after the Epoch (January 1 1970 00:00:00 GMT). Setting the default_timezone to GMT I get the desired formatted results with one line of code and avoid the adjustments for timezone.

There is more than one way to separate a cat from its skin.

[Nobbie]

Its still nonsense. What will you do if you publish your script on a Webhosting Service with a different local setting? And also, what is if the number of seconds exceed one day? And so on - its simply wrong, even if it works in certain conditions.

As you can see in my little script, its so easy to do it properly.