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tai_clock class

This clock reports international atomic time since 00:00:00 on Thursday, January 1, 1958. This clock doesn't account for leap seconds.

Syntax

class tai_clock; // C++20

Remarks

This clock reports International Atomic Time (TAI, from the French temps atomique international). International Atomic Time uses a weighted average of many atomic clocks to track time.

Time kept by the TAI clock is different from UTC time. The difference is that a leap second is occasionally added to UTC time to keep the difference between UTC time and UT1 (solar time) within +- 0.9 seconds of each other. A discrepancy gradually accrues between the time kept by an atomic clock and the time kept by measuring the rotation of the earth. A discrepancy accrues because the earth's rotation speed is irregular. It slows down over time by about one second every 1.5 years, thought it also sometimes speeds up. TAI time doesn't track this discrepancy. As of this writing, TAI time is 37 seconds ahead of UTC time. That's because of an initial difference of 10 seconds at the start of 1972, plus the leap seconds that have been inserted since 1972.

The clock's epoch, or the date and time from which it starts measuring time, is 1958-01-01 00:00:00.

Members

Name Description
from_utc Static. Converts a utc_time to a tai_time.
now Static. Returns the current International Atomic Time.
to_utc Static. Converts tai_time to utc_time.

Non-members

Name Description
from_stream Parse a tai_clock from the given stream using the specified format.
get_leap_second_info Get information about whether the supplied time specifies a time when a leap second was inserted, and the sum of all the leap seconds between January 1, 1970 and the specified duration.
operator<< Output a tai_time to the given stream.

Convenience type aliases

Name Description
tai_clock::duration In Microsoft's implementation, it's a synonym for duration<long long, ratio<1, 10'000'000>. It represents a duration of time measured in units of 100 nanoseconds.
tai_clock::period In Microsoft's implementation, it's a synonym for ratio<1, 10'000'000>. It represents the time in seconds (100 nanoseconds) between each tick in the duration.
tai_clock::rep A synonym for the type (long long) used to represent the integral units in this clock's tai_clock::duration.
tai_clock::time_point A synonym for time_point<tai_clock>. Used to represent a time_point for this clock.

Related

Name Description
tai_time A synonym for template <class Duration> using tai_time = time_point<tai_clock, Duration>. Represents a time_point for a tai_clock. You specify the Duration. Defined in std::chrono
tai_seconds A synonym for using tai_seconds = tai_time<seconds> A count of seconds, represented by a time_point that is associated with a tai_clock. Defined in std::chrono

Public constants

Name Description
tai_clock::is_steady constant Indicates whether the clock type is steady. Its value is false.

Requirements

Header: <chrono> (since C++20)

Namespace: std::chrono

Compiler Option: /std:c++latest

from_utc

Static method that converts a utc_time to a tai_time.

template <class Duration>
static tai_time<common_type_t<Duration, seconds>>
from_utc(const utc_time<Duration>& t) noexcept;

Parameters

t
The utc_time to convert.

Return value

A tai_time that represents the equivalent utc_time as t. It's calculated by taking the time since the epoch of the UTC clock and adding 378691210s where 378691210s == sys_days{1970y/January/1} - sys_days{1958y/January/1} + 10s

to_utc

Static method that converts a tai_time to a utc_time.

template<class Duration>
static utc_time<common_type_t<Duration, seconds>>
to_utc(const tai_time<Duration>& t) noexcept;

Parameters

t
The tai_time to convert.

Return Value

A utc_time that represents the equivalent tai_time as t. It's calculated as utc_time<common_type_t<Duration, seconds>>{t.time_since_epoch()} - 378691210s where 378691210s == sys_days{1970y/January/1} - sys_days{1958y/January/1} + 10s

is_steady

Static value that specifies whether the clock type is steady. In the Microsoft implementation, is_steady_constant is false. Because tai_clock isn't steady, you can't use this clock to take the time before an event, the time after an event, and subtract them to get the duration of the event because the clock may be adjusted during that time.

static const bool is_steady = false;

now

Static method that returns the current TAI time.

static time_point now() noexcept;

Return Value

A time_point object that represents the current time. The returned time point is effectively from_utc(utc_clock::now()).

See also

<chrono>
file_clock class
high_resolution_clock
local_t struct
steady_clock struct
system_clock struct
utc_clock class
Header Files Reference