Synopsis:
   $time()

Technical:
   This function returns Universal Coordinated Time, represented as the number
   of seconds that have elapsed since the epoch.  The epoch occured at 
   1970 Jan 1 00:00:00 GMT.  In theory, every unix host in the world should
   have the same time as every other unix host, but in practice that is not
   true due to inaccurate clocks.  If you need sub-second resolution, then
   you need to use the $utime() function.

Practical:
   You can convert the UTC value into human readable format using either the
   $stime() function or the $strftime() function.  You can also use
   the UTC value for tracking the elapsed time between two events.

Returns:
   The number of seconds that have elapsed since the epoch.

Examples:
   $time()      might return "850381369"

History:
   This function first appeared in ircII.

Cost:
   This function has a relative cost of two deltas. (One time fetching
	operation, and one return value)

See Also:
   stime(6); utime(6); strftime(6)

