now
result = now()
Input: no input · Output: result
What it is
Takes no arguments.
Overloads
One call shape — this function is not overloaded.
| Code | Input | Output | Description |
result = now() | no input | result Record, number, or string | Returns the current time (UTC) as a Record with integer fields .year, .month, .day, .hour, .minute, .second, plus .unix (number, Unix epoch seconds, for arithmetic) and .iso (string, an ISO-8601 timestamp you can print or store). |
Examples
From the documentation, and run by the build -- the output and the figure below are what the engine actually produced. Simplest first.
t = now()
print(t.year) # e.g. 2026 -- UTC
info = sysinfo()
print(info.logical_cores) # e.g. 16 -- what to branch on before sizing a pool(n)
output
2026 16
from concurrency
How it works
now() -- wall-clock time as a record, in UTC. UTC rather than local time, deliberately: reading the machine's timezone portably needs a dependency, and a timestamp whose zone you have to guess is worse than one that says Z. unix is there for arithmetic, iso for filenames and captions.
From the note above this builtin in the interpreter, where the reasoning was written down as it was built.