systime()
Return a time-of-day value in seconds since midnight, January 1, 1970, UTC. {G}
Log the start and end times of a data-processing program:
BEGIN { now = systime() mesg = strftime("Started at %m/%d/%Y %H:%M:%S", now) print mesg } process data ... END { now = systime() mesg = strftime("Ended at %m/%d/%Y %H:%M:%S", now) print mesg }