Two separate tm structs mirroring each other

Question

Here is my current situation:

• I have two tm structs, both set to the current time
• I make a change to the hour in one of the structs
• The change is occurring in the other struct magically....
• How do I prevent this from occurring? I need to be able to compare and know the number of seconds between two different times -- the current time and a time in the future. I've been using difftime and mktime to determine this. I recognize that I don't technically need two tm structs (the other struct could just be a time_t loaded with raw time) but I'm still interested in understanding why this occurs.

void Tracker::monitor(char* buffer){

// time handling
time_t systemtime, scheduletime, currenttime;
struct tm * dispatchtime;
struct tm * uiuctime;
double remainingtime;


// let's get two structs operating with current time
dispatchtime = dispatchtime_tm();
uiuctime = uiuctime_tm();

// set the scheduled parameters
dispatchtime->tm_hour = 5;
dispatchtime->tm_min = 05;
dispatchtime->tm_sec = 14;

uiuctime->tm_hour = 0;

    // both of these will now print the same time! (0:05:14)
    // what's linking them??

// print the scheduled time
printf ("Current Time :  %2d:%02d:%02d\n", uiuctime->tm_hour, uiuctime->tm_min, uiuctime->tm_sec);
printf ("Scheduled Time :  %2d:%02d:%02d\n", dispatchtime->tm_hour, dispatchtime->tm_min, dispatchtime->tm_sec);

}

struct tm* Tracker::uiuctime_tm(){
    time_t uiucTime;
    struct tm *ts_uiuc;

    // give currentTime the current time
    time(&uiucTime);

    // change the time zone to UIUC
    putenv("TZ=CST6CDT");
    tzset();

    // get the localtime for the tz selected
    ts_uiuc = localtime(&uiucTime);

    // set back the current timezone
    unsetenv("TZ");
    tzset();

    // set back our results
    return ts_uiuc;
}

struct tm* Tracker::dispatchtime_tm(){
    time_t currentTime;
    struct tm *ts_dispatch;

    // give currentTime the current time
    time(&currentTime);

    // get the localtime for the tz selected
    ts_dispatch = localtime(&currentTime);

    // set back our results
    return ts_dispatch;
}

Answer 1

You have to do this:

struct tm* temp_tm;
struct tm dispatchtime; // No longer a pointer
struct tm uiuctime;     // No longer a pointer

temp_tm = dispatchtime_tm();
dispatchtime = *temp_tm; // Member to member copy

temp_tm = uiuctime_tm();
uiuctime = *temp_tm; // Member to member copy

This way you will keep a local copy of the tm struct. This struct is allocated internally in the standard library, each call to localtime will point to the same memory address!