Current date and time as string

Non C++11 solution: With the <ctime> header, you could use strftime. Make sure your buffer is large enough, you wouldn't want to overrun it and wreak havoc later.

#include <iostream>
#include <ctime>

int main ()
{
  time_t rawtime;
  struct tm * timeinfo;
  char buffer[80];

  time (&rawtime);
  timeinfo = localtime(&rawtime);

  strftime(buffer,sizeof(buffer),"%d-%m-%Y %H:%M:%S",timeinfo);
  std::string str(buffer);

  std::cout << str;

  return 0;
}

With C++20, time point formatting (to string) is available in the (chrono) standard library. https://en.cppreference.com/w/cpp/chrono/system_clock/formatter

#include <chrono>
#include <format>
#include <iostream>

int main()
{
   const auto now = std::chrono::system_clock::now();
   std::cout << std::format("{:%d-%m-%Y %H:%M:%OS}", now) << '\n';
}

Output

13-12-2021 09:24:44

It works in Visual Studio 2019 (v16.11.5) with the latest C++ language version (/std:c++latest).


Since C++11 you could use std::put_time from iomanip header:

#include <iostream>
#include <iomanip>
#include <ctime>

int main()
{
    auto t = std::time(nullptr);
    auto tm = *std::localtime(&t);
    std::cout << std::put_time(&tm, "%d-%m-%Y %H-%M-%S") << std::endl;
}

std::put_time is a stream manipulator, therefore it could be used together with std::ostringstream in order to convert the date to a string:

#include <iostream>
#include <iomanip>
#include <ctime>
#include <sstream>

int main()
{
    auto t = std::time(nullptr);
    auto tm = *std::localtime(&t);

    std::ostringstream oss;
    oss << std::put_time(&tm, "%d-%m-%Y %H-%M-%S");
    auto str = oss.str();

    std::cout << str << std::endl;
}

you can use asctime() function of time.h to get a string simply .

time_t _tm =time(NULL );

struct tm * curtime = localtime ( &_tm );
cout<<"The current date/time is:"<<asctime(curtime);

Sample output:

The current date/time is:Fri Oct 16 13:37:30 2015