What is time_t ultimately a typedef to?

Question

I searched my Linux box and saw this typedef:

typedef __time_t time_t;

But I could not find the __time_t definition.

Answer 1

Standards

William Brendel quoted Wikipedia, but I prefer it from the horse's mouth.

C99 N1256 standard draft 7.23.1/3 "Components of time" says:

The types declared are size_t (described in 7.17) clock_t and time_t which are arithmetic types capable of representing times

and 6.2.5/18 "Types" says:

Integer and floating types are collectively called arithmetic types.

POSIX 7 sys_types.h says:

[CX] time_t shall be an integer type.

where [CX] is defined as:

[CX] Extension to the ISO C standard.

It is an extension because it makes a stronger guarantee: floating points are out.

gcc one-liner

No need to create a file as mentioned by Quassnoi:

echo | gcc -E -xc -include 'time.h' - | grep time_t

On Ubuntu 15.10 GCC 5.2 the top two lines are:

typedef long int __time_t;
typedef __time_t time_t;

Command breakdown with some quotes from man gcc:

• -E: "Stop after the preprocessing stage; do not run the compiler proper."
• -xc: Specify C language, since input comes from stdin which has no file extension.
• -include file: "Process file as if "#include "file"" appeared as the first line of the primary source file."
• -: input from stdin