From: jameskuyper@alumni.caltech.edu   
      
   On 2026-01-05 03:17, Andrey Tarasevich wrote:   
   > On Sun 1/4/2026 11:19 PM, Kenny McCormack wrote:   
   >> The question is: How can you reliably printf() a time_t value?   
   >> What conversion spec should you use?   
   >   
   > You can't. As far as the language is concerned, `time_t` is intended to   
   > be an opaque type. It has to be a real type, ...   
      
   In C99, it was only required to be an arithmetic type. I pointed out   
   that this would permit it to be, for example, double _Imaginary. I like   
   to think that my comment may have been responsible for the fact that   
   C2011 specified that it must be real.   
      
   > ... so it is either an integer   
   > of a plain floating-point type. But other than that nothing is known   
   > about it. There's really no point in printing it.   
   >   
   > If you still want to, you can do it in some implementation-specific way.   
   > Which still immediately means that you can't do it "reliably", if I   
   > understand what you mean correctly.   
      
   if(1/(time_t)2)   
   {	// time_t is a floating point type)   
   	prrintf("%lg", (long double)t);   
   }   
   else if(0 < (time_t)-1)   
   {	// time_t is an unsigned integer type   
   	printf("%ju", (uintmax_t)t);   
   }   
   else	// time_t is a signed integer type   
   	printf("%jd", (intmax_t)t);   
      
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