snprintf's behavior is to return the number of characters that would have been generated had the output buffer not been limited. That being true, I think the asctime.c below does what Paul intended. Does anyone see problems with using this in the next bundle? --ado /* ** This file is in the public domain, so clarified as of ** 1996-06-05 by Arthur David Olson (arthur_david_olson@nih.gov). */ #ifndef lint #ifndef NOID static char elsieid[] = "@(#)asctime.c 7.13"; #endif /* !defined NOID */ #endif /* !defined lint */ /*LINTLIBRARY*/ #include "private.h" #include "tzfile.h" #define STANDARD_BUFFER_SIZE 26 /* ** A la ISO/IEC 9945-1, ANSI/IEEE Std 1003.1, 2004 Edition. */ char * asctime_r(timeptr, buf) register const struct tm * timeptr; char * buf; { static const char wday_name[][3] = { "Sun", "Mon", "Tue", "Wed", "Thu", "Fri", "Sat" }; static const char mon_name[][3] = { "Jan", "Feb", "Mar", "Apr", "May", "Jun", "Jul", "Aug", "Sep", "Oct", "Nov", "Dec" }; register const char * wn; register const char * mn; register int result; if (timeptr->tm_wday < 0 || timeptr->tm_wday >= DAYSPERWEEK) wn = "???"; else wn = wday_name[timeptr->tm_wday]; if (timeptr->tm_mon < 0 || timeptr->tm_mon >= MONSPERYEAR) mn = "???"; else mn = mon_name[timeptr->tm_mon]; /* ** The format used in the (2004) standard is ** "%.3s %.3s%3d %.2d:%.2d:%.2d %d\n" ** Use "%02d", as it is a bit more portable than "%.2d". */ result = snprintf(buf, STANDARD_BUFFER_SIZE, "%.3s %.3s%3d %02d:%02d:%02d %ld\n", wn, mn, timeptr->tm_mday, timeptr->tm_hour, timeptr->tm_min, timeptr->tm_sec, timeptr->tm_year + (long) TM_YEAR_BASE); if (result < 0 || result >= STANDARD_BUFFER_SIZE) { errno = EOVERFLOW; return NULL; } return buf; } /* ** A la ISO/IEC 9945-1, ANSI/IEEE Std 1003.1, 2004 Edition, ** with core dump avoidance. */ char * asctime(timeptr) register const struct tm * timeptr; { static char result[STANDARD_BUFFER_SIZE]; return asctime_r(timeptr, result); }