On Unix-like operating systems, the time command reports how long it took for a command to complete execution.

This page covers the GNU/Linux version of time.

Description

The time command runs the specified program command with the given arguments. When command finishes, time writes a message to standard error giving timing statistics about this program run. These statistics consist of:

  • Description

  • Syntax

  • Examples

  • Related commands

  • Linux commands help

  • The elapsed real time between invocation and termination.

  • The user CPU time.

  • The system CPU time.

Syntax

time [-p] command [arguments…]

Options

Examples

time df

Calculates free disk space using the df command, and reports how long it took for the command to complete. Output of this command would resemble the following:

Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on rootfs 7867856 3694744 3773448 50% / udev 10240 0 10240 0% /dev tmpfs 207456 580 206876 1% /run tmpfs 5120 0 5120 0% /run/lock tmpfs 493340 84 493256 1% /run/shm real 0m0.116s user 0m0.004s sys 0m0.008s

csh — The C shell command interpreter.date — Output the current date and time.timex — Report process data and system activity for a specified command.