The ctime and ctime_r functions convert the time pointed to by bintim into a 26-character string, and return a pointer to the string. The difference between the ctime_r and ctime functions is that the former puts its result into a user-specified buffer. The latter puts its result into thread-specific static memory allocated by the Compaq C RTL, which can be overwritten by subsequent calls to ctime or asctime; you must make a copy if you want to save it. On success, ctime returns a pointer to the string; ctime_r returns its second argument. On failure, these functions return the NULL pointer. The type time_t is defined in the <time.h> header file as follows: typedef long int time_t The ctime function behaves as if it called tzset. NOTE Generally speaking, UTC-based time functions can affect in- memory time-zone information, which is processwide data. However, if the system time zone remains the same during the execution of the application (which is the common case) and the cache of timezone files is enabled (which is the default), then the _r variant of the time functions asctime_ r, ctime_r, gmtime_r, and localtime_r, is both thread-safe and AST-reentrant. If, however, the system time zone can change during the execution of the application or the cache of timezone files is not enabled, then both variants of the UTC-based time functions belong to the third class of functions, which are neither thread-safe nor AST-reentrant.