The gmtime and gmtime_r functions convert the time (in seconds since the Epoch) pointed to by timer into a broken-down time, expressed as Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), and store it in a tm structure. The difference between the gmtime_r and gmtime functions is that the former puts the result into a user-specified tm structure where the result is stored. The latter puts the result into thread-specific static memory allocated by the C RTL, and which is overwritten by subsequent calls to gmtime; you must make a copy if you want to save it. On success, gmtime returns a pointer to the tm structure; gmtime_ r returns its second argument. On failure, these functions return the NULL pointer. NOTE Generally speaking, UTC-based time functions can affect in- memory time-zone information, which is processwide data. However, if the system time zone remains the same during the execution of the application (which is the common case) and the cache of timezone files is enabled (which is the default), then the _r variant of the time functions asctime_ r, ctime_r, gmtime_r and localtime_r, is both thread-safe and AST-reentrant. If, however, the system time zone can change during the execution of the application or the cache of timezone files is not enabled, then both variants of the UTC-based time functions belong to the third class of functions, which are neither thread-safe nor AST-reentrant.