Using POSIX timestamps

POSIX timestamps are a traditional internal representation of time in Unix-based operating systems. A POSIX timestamp is defined as the number of seconds since the epoch, or 00:00:00 Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), January 1, 1970.

Because of its simplicity, this representation is widely used in network protocols, file metadata, or serialization.

In this recipe, we will learn how to convert C++ time points to POSIX timestamps, and create C++ time points from POSIX timestamps.

How to do it...

We are going to create an application that converts a time point into a POSIX timestamp and then recovers a time point from this timestamp.

1. In your  ~/test working directory, create a...