PMPARSEINTERVAL(3)

NAME
pmParseInterval, pmParseHighResInterval - convert interval string to binary time structure

C SYNOPSIS
#include <pcp/pmapi.h>

int pmParseInterval(const char *string, struct timeval *urslt, char **errmsg);
int pmParseHighResInterval(const char *string, struct timespec *nrslt, char **errmsg);

cc ... -lpcp

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

Similarly, pmParseHighResInterval parses the argument string and fills in the tv_sec and tv_nsec components of the nrslt 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.

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