C++11 alternative to localtime_r

C++ defines time formatting functions in terms of strftime, which requires a struct tm "broken-down time" record. However, the C and C++03 languages provide no thread-safe way to obtain such a record; there is just one master struct tm for the whole program.

In C++03, this was more or less OK, because the language didn't support multithreading; it merely supported platforms supporting multithreading, which then provided facilities like POSIX localtime_r.

C++11 also defines new time utilities, which interface with the non-broken-down time_t type, which is what would be used to reinitialize the global struct tm. But obtaining a time_t isn't the problem.

Am I missing something or does this task still require reliance on POSIX?

EDIT: Here is some workaround code. It maintains compatibility with multithreaded environments that provide ::localtime_r and single-threaded environments that provide only std::localtime. It can easily be adapted to check for other functions as well, such as posix::localtime_r or ::localtime_s or what-have-you.

namespace query {
    char localtime_r( ... );

    struct has_localtime_r
        { enum { value = sizeof localtime_r( std::declval< std::time_t * >(), std::declval< std::tm * >() )
                        == sizeof( std::tm * ) }; };


    template< bool available > struct safest_localtime {
        static std::tm *call( std::time_t const *t, std::tm *r )
            { return localtime_r( t, r ); }
    };

    template<> struct safest_localtime< false > {
        static std::tm *call( std::time_t const *t, std::tm *r )
            { return std::localtime( t ); }
    };
}
std::tm *localtime( std::time_t const *t, std::tm *r )
    { return query::safest_localtime< query::has_localtime_r::value >().call( t, r ); }

You're not missing anything.

The next C standard (due out probably this year) does have defined in Annex K:

struct tm *localtime_s(const time_t * restrict timer,
                       struct tm * restrict result);

And this new function is thread safe! But don't get too happy. There's two major problems:

1. localtime_s is an optional extension to C11.

2. C++11 references C99, not C11. local_time_s is not to be found in C++11, optional or not.

Update

In the 4 years since I answered this question, I have also been frustrated by the poor design of C++ tools in this area. I was motivated to create modern C++ tools to deal with this:

http://howardhinnant.github.io/date/tz.html

#include "tz.h"
#include <iostream>

int
main()
{
    using namespace date;
    auto local_time = make_zoned(current_zone(), std::chrono::system_clock::now());
    std::cout << local_time << '\n';
}

This just output for me:

2015-10-28 14:17:31.980135 EDT

local_time is a pairing of std::chrono::system_clock::time_point and time_zone indicating the local time.

There exists utilities for breaking the std::chrono::system_clock::time_point into human-readable field types, such as year, month, day, hour, minute, second, and subseconds. Here is a presentation focusing on those (non-timezone) pieces:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tzyGjOm8AKo

All of this is of course thread safe (it is modern C++).

Update 2

The above is now part of C++20 with this slightly altered syntax:

#include <chrono>
#include <iostream>

int
main()
{
    namespace chr = std::chrono;

    chr::zoned_time local_time{chr::current_zone(), chr::system_clock::now()};
    std::cout << local_time << '\n';
}