# man > time(3am)

[_TIME_(3am)](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/man/TIME/3am/markdown)                             GNU Awk Extension Modules                            [_TIME_(3am)](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/man/TIME/3am/markdown)

## NAME
       time - time functions for gawk

## SYNOPSIS
       @load "time"

       time = gettimeofday()
       ret = sleep(amount)

## CAUTION
       This  extension  is  deprecated  in  favor  of the **timex **extension in the _gawkextlib_ project.
       Loading it issues a warning.  It will be removed from the _gawk_ distribution in the next major
       release.

## DESCRIPTION
       The _time_ extension adds two functions named **gettimeofday() **and **sleep()**, as follows.

### gettimeofday()
              This function returns the number of seconds since the Epoch as a floating-point value.
              It should have subsecond precision.  It returns -1 upon error and sets **ERRNO **to  indi‐
              cate the problem.

       **sleep(_**seconds_**)**
              This  function  attempts to sleep for the given amount of seconds, which may include a
              fractional portion.  If _seconds_ is negative, or the attempt to sleep  fails,  then  it
              returns -1 and sets **ERRNO**.  Otherwise, the function should return 0 after sleeping for
              the indicated amount of time.

## EXAMPLE
       @load "time"
       ...
       printf "It is now %g seconds since the Epoch\n", gettimeofday()
       printf "Pausing for a while... " ; sleep(2.5) ; print "done"

## SEE ALSO
       _GAWK:_  _Effective_ _AWK_ _Programming_, [_filefuncs_(3am)](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/man/filefuncs/3am/markdown), [_fnmatch_(3am)](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/man/fnmatch/3am/markdown), [_fork_(3am)](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/man/fork/3am/markdown), [_inplace_(3am)](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/man/inplace/3am/markdown), _ord‐_
       [_chr_(3am)](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/man/chr/3am/markdown), [_readdir_(3am)](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/man/readdir/3am/markdown), [_readfile_(3am)](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/man/readfile/3am/markdown), [_revoutput_(3am)](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/man/revoutput/3am/markdown), [_rwarray_(3am)](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/man/rwarray/3am/markdown).

       [_gettimeofday_(2)](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/man/gettimeofday/2/markdown), [_nanosleep_(2)](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/man/nanosleep/2/markdown), [_select_(2)](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/man/select/2/markdown).

## AUTHOR
       Arnold Robbins, **<arnold@skeeve.com>**.

## COPYING PERMISSIONS
       Copyright © 2012, 2013, 2018, 2022, Free Software Foundation, Inc.

       Permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim copies of this manual page provided the
       copyright notice and this permission notice are preserved on all copies.

       Permission is granted to copy and distribute modified versions of this manual page under  the
       conditions  for verbatim copying, provided that the entire resulting derived work is distrib‐
       uted under the terms of a permission notice identical to this one.

       Permission is granted to copy and distribute translations of this manual  page  into  another
       language,  under  the above conditions for modified versions, except that this permission no‐
       tice may be stated in a translation approved by the Foundation.

Free Software Foundation                     Jul 11 2022                                   [_TIME_(3am)](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/man/TIME/3am/markdown)