NAME

time − time a command

SYNOPSIS

time command

AVAILABILITY

SUNWaccu

DESCRIPTION

The command is executed; after it is complete, time prints the elapsed time during the command (real), the time spent in the system (sys), and the time spent in execution of the command (user).  Times are reported in seconds or in the format hours:minutes:seconds. 

The times are printed on standard error. 

EXAMPLES

The two examples here show the differences between the csh version of time and the version in /usr/bin/time.  These examples assume that csh is the shell in use. 

example% time find / -name csh.1 -print
/usr/share/man/man1/csh.1
95.0u 692.0s 1:17:52 16% 0+0k 0+0io 0pf+0w

For an explanation of the format of time output see csh(1). 

example% /usr/bin/time find / -name csh.1 -print
/usr/share/man/man1/csh.1
 real  1:23:31.5
user     1:33.2
sys     11:28.2

SEE ALSO

timex(1), times(2)

NOTES

When the time command is run on a multiprocessor machine, the total of the values printed for user and sys can exceed real.  This is  because on a multiprocessor maching it is possible to divide the task between the various processors. 

When the command being timed is interrupted, the timing values displayed may not always be accurate. 

BUGS

Elapsed time is accurate to the second, while the CPU times are measured to the 100th second.  Thus the sum of the CPU times can be up to a second larger than the elapsed time. 

SunOS 5.2  —  Last change: 4 Mar 1993