What is time(NULL) in C?

Question

I learning about some basic C functions and have encountered time(NULL) in some manuals.

What exactly does this mean?

Answer 1

You have to refer to the documentation for ctime. time is a function that takes one parameter of type time_t * (a pointer to a time_t object) and assigns to it the current time. Instead of passing this pointer, you can also pass NULL and then use the returned time_t value instead.