time

time [ -apqvV ] [ -f FORMAT ] [ -o FILE ]
     [ --append ] [ --verbose ] [ --quiet ] [ --portability ]
     [ --format=FORMAT ] [ --output=FILE ] [ --version ]
     [ --help ] COMMAND [ ARGS ]

time runs a command and times how long it takes, summarising system resource usage.

A little known but extremey useful little utility. Just prefix any shell command with the word 'time' and it will tell you how long it took to run.

Examples

Time how long it takes to dump a database. Note that time writes to stderr, so its output is displayed on the screen and not sent to the file in the following example:

$ time mysqldump -u root mythconverg > mysql.dmp

real	0m8.493s
user	0m3.560s
sys	0m0.656s

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time

Examples