NAME

time − time a command

SYNOPSIS

time command

DESCRIPTION

The command is executed; after it is complete, time prints the elapsed time during the command, the time spent in the system, and the time spent in execution of the command.  Times are reported in seconds. 

The execution time can depend on what kind of memory the program happens to land in; the user time in MOS is often half what it is in core. 

The times are printed on standard error. 

EXAMPLE

time nroff man filea

will, in sh, perform the formatting and report the time at the end of the file, e.g.:

real  22.0
user   8.6
sys    6.4

In csh, on the other hand, the time report might be:

8.9u  7.0s  0:29  54%

which reports the user time, system time, real time, and percentage of real time that the CPU was active, which is the sum of the user and system times divided by real elapsed time. 

SEE ALSO

times(2). 

Version 2.5  —  April 22, 1987