PMPARSEINTERVAL(3)

NAME
pmParseInterval - convert interval string to binary time structure

C SYNOPSIS
#include <pcp/pmapi.h>

int pmParseInterval(const char *string,
struct timespec *rslt, char **errmsg);

cc ... -lpcp

DESCRIPTION
pmParseInterval parses the argument string specifying an interval of time and fills in the tv_sec and tv_nsec components of the rslt structure to represent that interval (nanosecond precision).

The input string is most commonly the argument following a -t command line option to a PCP application, and the syntax is fully described in PCPIntro(1).

DIAGNOSTICS
pmParseInterval returns 0 and errmsg is undefined if the parsing is successful.

If the given string does not conform to the required syntax pmParseInterval returns -1 and a dynamically allocated error message string in errmsg. The error message is terminated with a newline and includes the text of the input string along with an indicator of the position at which the error was detected, e.g.

In the case of an error, the caller is responsible for calling free(3) to release the space allocated for errmsg.

COMPATIBILITY
Prior to PCP 7.0 the rslt argument was a struct timeval. To support PMAPI transition, the old interface and semantics can be used if applications are recompiled with -DPMAPI_VERSION=2.

For a time in PCP 6.x there was a routine with the same semantics as the current pmParseInterval called pmParseHighResInterval although this is now deprecated and compile-time support for pmParseHighResInterval will be removed in a future release.

SEE ALSO
PCPIntro(1), free(3), PMAPI(3) and pmParseTimeWindow(3).