pmparsetimewindow(3) — Linux manual page

NAME | C SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | USAGE | DIAGNOSTICS | COMPATIBILITY | SEE ALSO | COLOPHON

PMPARSETIMEWINDOW(3)     Library Functions Manual    PMPARSETIMEWINDOW(3)

NAME         top

       pmParseTimeWindow - parse time window command line arguments

C SYNOPSIS         top

       #include <pcp/pmapi.h>

       int pmParseTimeWindow(const char *swStart, const char *swEnd,
                             const char *swAlign, const char *swOffset,
                             const struct timespec *logStart,
                             const struct timespec *logEnd,
                             struct timespec *rsltStart,
                             struct timespec *rsltEnd,
                             struct timespec *rsltOffset, char **errMsg);

       cc ... -lpcp

DESCRIPTION         top

       pmParseTimeWindow  are  designed to encapsulate the interpretation
       of the -S, -T, -A and -O command line options used by  Performance
       Co-Pilot  (PCP)  applications to define a time window of interest.
       The time window is defined by a start time and an  end  time  that
       constrains the time interval during which the PCP application will
       retrieve  and  display performance metrics.  In the absence of the
       -O and -A options to specify an initial  sample  time  origin  and
       time  alignment (see below), the PCP application will retrieve the
       first sample at the start of the time window.

       The syntax and meaning of the various argument formats  for  these
       options is described in PCPIntro(1).

USAGE         top

       pmParseTimeWindow  expect to be called with the argument of the -S
       option as swStart, the argument of the -T option as swEnd, the ar‐
       gument of the -A option as swAlign, and the argument of the -O op‐
       tion as swOffset.  Any or all of these parameters may be  NULL  to
       indicate  that  the  corresponding  command  line  option  was not
       present.

       If the application is using a set of PCP archives as the source of
       performance metrics, you also need to supply the time of the first
       archive entry as logStart, and the time of the last archive  entry
       as  logEnd.   See  pmGetArchiveLabel(3) and pmGetArchiveEnd(3) for
       how to obtain values for these times.

       If the application is manipulating multiple  concurrent  archives,
       then  the caller must resolve how the default time window is to be
       defined (the union of the time intervals  in  all  archives  is  a
       likely interpretation).

       If  the  application  is  using  a  live feed of performance data,
       logStart should be the current time (but could be aligned  on  the
       next second for example), while logEnd should have its tv_sec com‐
       ponent set to PM_MAX_TIME_T.

       The rsltStart, rsltEnd and rsltOffset structures must be allocated
       before calling pmParseTimeWindow.

       You  also  need to set the current PCP reporting time zone to cor‐
       rectly reflect the -z and -Z command line parameters before  call‐
       ing  these routines.  See pmUseZone(3) and friends for information
       on how this is done.

DIAGNOSTICS         top

       If the conversion is successful, pmParseTimeWindow  return  1  and
       fill in rsltStart, rsltEnd and rsltOffset with the start, end, and
       offset  times for the time window defined by the input parameters.
       The errMsg parameter is not changed when either  pmParseTimeWindow
       returns 1.

       If the conversion is successful, but the requested alignment could
       not  be  performed (e.g. the set of PCP archives is too short) the
       alignment is ignored, rsltStart, rsltEnd and rsltOffset are filled
       in and pmParseTimeWindow return 0.   In  this  case,  errMsg  will
       point to a warning message in a dynamically allocated buffer.  The
       caller is responsible for releasing the buffer by calling free(3).

       If the argument strings could not be parsed, pmParseTimeWindow re‐
       turn -1.  In this case, errMsg will point to an error message in a
       dynamically  allocated  buffer.  The caller is responsible for re‐
       leasing the buffer by calling free(3).

COMPATIBILITY         top

       Prior to PCP 7.0 and libpcp.so.4 the logStart, logEnd,  rsltStart,
       rsltEnd  and rsltOffset arguments were struct timeval.  To support
       PMAPI transition, the old interface and semantics can be  used  if
       applications  are  linked  with  libpcp.so.3  or  recompiled  with
       -DPMAPI_VERSION=2.

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

SEE ALSO         top

       free(3),   PMAPI(3),   pmGetArchiveEnd(3),   pmGetArchiveLabel(3),
       pmNewContextZone(3),    pmNewZone(3),    pmParseInterval(3)    and
       pmUseZone(3).

COLOPHON         top

       This  page is part of the PCP (Performance Co-Pilot) project.  In‐
       formation about the project can be found at  ⟨http://www.pcp.io/⟩.
       If  you  have  a  bug  report  for  this  manual  page, send it to
       pcp@groups.io.  This page was obtained from the project's upstream
       Git repository ⟨https://github.com/performancecopilot/pcp.git⟩  on
       2025-08-11.   (At  that  time,  the date of the most recent commit
       that was found in the repository was 2025-08-11.)  If you discover
       any rendering problems in this HTML version of the  page,  or  you
       believe  there is a better or more up-to-date source for the page,
       or you have corrections or improvements to the information in this
       COLOPHON (which is not part of the original manual page),  send  a
       mail to man-pages@man7.org

Performance Co-Pilot               PCP               PMPARSETIMEWINDOW(3)

Pages that refer to this page: pmseries(1)__pmconverttime(3)pmparseinterval(3)__pmparsetime(3)