Get program execution time in the shell

Question

I want to execute something in a linux shell under a few different conditions, and be able to output the execution time of each execution.

I know I could write a perl or python script that would do this, but is there a way I can do it in the shell? (which happens to be bash)

Answer 1

You can get much more detailed information than the bash built-in time (which Robert Gamble mentions) using time(1). Normally this is /usr/bin/time.

^{Editor's note: To ensure that you're invoking the external utility time rather than your shell's time keyword, invoke it as /usr/bin/time.
time is a POSIX-mandated utility, but the only option it is required to support is -p.
Specific platforms implement specific, nonstandard extensions: -v works with GNU's time utility, as demonstrated below (the question is tagged linux); the BSD/macOS implementation uses -l to produce similar output - see man 1 time.}

Example of verbose output:

$ /usr/bin/time -v sleep 1
       Command being timed: "sleep 1"
       User time (seconds): 0.00
       System time (seconds): 0.00
       Percent of CPU this job got: 1%
       Elapsed (wall clock) time (h:mm:ss or m:ss): 0:01.05
       Average shared text size (kbytes): 0
       Average unshared data size (kbytes): 0
       Average stack size (kbytes): 0
       Average total size (kbytes): 0
       Maximum resident set size (kbytes): 0
       Average resident set size (kbytes): 0
       Major (requiring I/O) page faults: 0
       Minor (reclaiming a frame) page faults: 210
       Voluntary context switches: 2
       Involuntary context switches: 1
       Swaps: 0
       File system inputs: 0
       File system outputs: 0
       Socket messages sent: 0
       Socket messages received: 0
       Signals delivered: 0
       Page size (bytes): 4096
       Exit status: 0

Answer 2

#!/bin/bash
START=$(date +%s)
# do something
# start your script work here
ls -R /etc > /tmp/x
rm -f /tmp/x
# your logic ends here
END=$(date +%s)
DIFF=$(( $END - $START ))
echo "It took $DIFF seconds"

Answer 3

If you only need precision to the second, you can use the builtin $SECONDS variable, which counts the number of seconds that the shell has been running.

while true; do
    start=$SECONDS
    some_long_running_command
    duration=$(( SECONDS - start ))
    echo "This run took $duration seconds"
    if some_condition; then break; fi
done

Answer 4

Should you want more precision, use %N with date (and use bc for the diff, because $(()) only handles integers).

Here's how to do it:

start=$(date +%s.%N)
# do some stuff here
dur=$(echo "$(date +%s.%N) - $start" | bc)

printf "Execution time: %.6f seconds" $dur

Example:

start=$(date +%s.%N); \
  sleep 0.1s; \
  dur=$(echo "$(date +%s.%N) - $start" | bc); \
  printf "Execution time: %.6f seconds\n" $dur

Result:

Execution time: 0.104623 seconds

Answer 5

If you intend to use the times later to compute with, learn how to use the -f option of /usr/bin/time to output code that saves times. Here's some code I used recently to get and sort the execution times of a whole classful of students' programs:

fmt="run { date = '$(date)', user = '$who', test = '$test', host = '$(hostname)', times = { user = %U, system = %S, elapsed = %e } }"
/usr/bin/time -f "$fmt" -o $timefile command args...

I later concatenated all the $timefile files and pipe the output into a Lua interpreter. You can do the same with Python or bash or whatever your favorite syntax is. I love this technique.

Answer 6

one possibly simple method ( that may not meet different users needs ) is the use of shell PROMPT.it is a simple solution that can be useful in some cases. You can use the bash prompting feature as in the example below:

export PS1='[\t \u@\h]\$' 

The above command will result in changing the shell prompt to :

[HH:MM:SS username@hostname]$ 

Each time you run a command (or hit enter) returning back to the shell prompt, the prompt will display current time.

notes:
1) beware that if you waited for sometime before you type your next command, then this time need to be considered, i.e the time displayed in the shell prompt is the timestamp when the shell prompt was displayed, not when you enter command. some users choose to hit Enter key to get a new prompt with a new timestamp before they are ready for the next command.
2) There are other available options and modifiers that can be used to change the bash prompt, refer to ( man bash ) for more details.