NAME

time − time a command

SYNTAX

time command

DESCRIPTION

A given command is executed and, after it is complete, time prints the time that elapsed during the command, the time spent in the system, and the time spent in the execution of the command.  Times are reported in seconds and are printed on the diagnostic output stream.

The time command is built in to csh(,), using a different output format. The output format is selectable by the user.  If the time Shell variable has two components, the second component is taken to be an output specification string similar to printf. A percent sign introduces a conversion operator; the next character specifies the desired conversion. Other characters are simply printed. The conversion characters and their meanings follow:

DAverage kilobytes of resident data+stack pages. 

EElapsed time in seconds. 

FThe number of page faults which resulted in disk activity. 

IThe number of file system input events (reads that came from the disk). 

KAverage kilobytes of resident text+data+stack pages. 

MMaximum kilobytes of resident text+data+stack pages. 

OThe number of file system output events (writes that went to the disk). 

PPercentage of the CPU. 

RThe number of page faults resulting from the simulation of reference bits. 

SSystem time in seconds. 

UUser time in seconds. 

WThe number of swaps which occurred. 

XAverage kilobytes of resident text pages. 

The default format is

"%Uu %Ss %E %P %X+%Dk %I+%Oio %Fpf+%Ww"

If the format string has any special characters, including spaces, then they must be protected by quoting.

RESTRICTIONS

Elapsed time is accurate to the second, while the CPU times are measured to the 60th second.  Thus, the sum of the CPU times can be up to a second larger than the elapsed time. 

The time command is a built-in command to csh(,), with a much different syntax.  This command is available as /bin/time to csh users.

SEE ALSO

vtimes(3)

Macro Packags and Conventions