time(1) — Linux manual page

NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | OPTIONS | EXIT STATUS | ENVIRONMENT | GNU VERSION | BUGS | SEE ALSO | COLOPHON

time(1)                  General Commands Manual                 time(1)

NAME         top

       time - time a simple command or give resource usage

SYNOPSIS         top

       time [option ...] command [argument ...]

DESCRIPTION         top

       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 (i) the elapsed real time between
       invocation and termination, (ii) the user CPU time (the sum of
       the tms_utime and tms_cutime values in a struct tms as returned
       by times(2)), and (iii) the system CPU time (the sum of the
       tms_stime and tms_cstime values in a struct tms as returned by
       times(2)).

       Note: some shells (e.g., bash(1)) have a built-in time command
       that provides similar information on the usage of time and
       possibly other resources.  To access the real command, you may
       need to specify its pathname (something like /usr/bin/time).

OPTIONS         top

       -p     When in the POSIX locale, use the precise traditional
              format

                  "real %f\nuser %f\nsys %f\n"

              (with numbers in seconds) where the number of decimals in
              the output for %f is unspecified but is sufficient to
              express the clock tick accuracy, and at least one.

EXIT STATUS         top

       If command was invoked, the exit status is that of command.
       Otherwise, it is 127 if command could not be found, 126 if it
       could be found but could not be invoked, and some other nonzero
       value (1–125) if something else went wrong.

ENVIRONMENT         top

       The variables LANG, LC_ALL, LC_CTYPE, LC_MESSAGES, LC_NUMERIC,
       and NLSPATH are used for the text and formatting of the output.
       PATH is used to search for command.

GNU VERSION         top

       Below a description of the GNU 1.7 version of time.  Disregarding
       the name of the utility, GNU makes it output lots of useful
       information, not only about time used, but also on other
       resources like memory, I/O and IPC calls (where available).  The
       output is formatted using a format string that can be specified
       using the -f option or the TIME environment variable.

       The default format string is:

           %Uuser %Ssystem %Eelapsed %PCPU (%Xtext+%Ddata %Mmax)k
           %Iinputs+%Ooutputs (%Fmajor+%Rminor)pagefaults %Wswaps

       When the -p option is given, the (portable) output format is
       used:

           real %e
           user %U
           sys %S

   The format string
       The format is interpreted in the usual printf-like way.  Ordinary
       characters are directly copied, tab, newline, and backslash are
       escaped using \t, \n, and \\, a percent sign is represented by
       %%, and otherwise % indicates a conversion.  The program time
       will always add a trailing newline itself.  The conversions
       follow.  All of those used by tcsh(1) are supported.

       Time

       %E     Elapsed real time (in [hours:]minutes:seconds).

       %e     (Not in tcsh(1).)  Elapsed real time (in seconds).

       %S     Total number of CPU-seconds that the process spent in
              kernel mode.

       %U     Total number of CPU-seconds that the process spent in user
              mode.

       %P     Percentage of the CPU that this job got, computed as (%U +
              %S) / %E.

       Memory

       %M     Maximum resident set size of the process during its
              lifetime, in Kbytes.

       %t     (Not in tcsh(1).)  Average resident set size of the
              process, in Kbytes.

       %K     Average total (data+stack+text) memory use of the process,
              in Kbytes.

       %D     Average size of the process's unshared data area, in
              Kbytes.

       %p     (Not in tcsh(1).)  Average size of the process's unshared
              stack space, in Kbytes.

       %X     Average size of the process's shared text space, in
              Kbytes.

       %Z     (Not in tcsh(1).)  System's page size, in bytes.  This is
              a per-system constant, but varies between systems.

       %F     Number of major page faults that occurred while the
              process was running.  These are faults where the page has
              to be read in from disk.

       %R     Number of minor, or recoverable, page faults.  These are
              faults for pages that are not valid but which have not yet
              been claimed by other virtual pages.  Thus the data in the
              page is still valid but the system tables must be updated.

       %W     Number of times the process was swapped out of main
              memory.

       %c     Number of times the process was context-switched
              involuntarily (because the time slice expired).

       %w     Number of waits: times that the program was context-
              switched voluntarily, for instance while waiting for an
              I/O operation to complete.

       I/O

       %I     Number of filesystem inputs by the process.

       %O     Number of filesystem outputs by the process.

       %r     Number of socket messages received by the process.

       %s     Number of socket messages sent by the process.

       %k     Number of signals delivered to the process.

       %C     (Not in tcsh(1).)  Name and command-line arguments of the
              command being timed.

       %x     (Not in tcsh(1).)  Exit status of the command.

   GNU options
       -f format, --format=format
              Specify output format, possibly overriding the format
              specified in the environment variable TIME.

       -p, --portability
              Use the portable output format.

       -o file, --output=file
              Do not send the results to stderr, but overwrite the
              specified file.

       -a, --append
              (Used together with -o.) Do not overwrite but append.

       -v, --verbose
              Give very verbose output about all the program knows
              about.

       -q, --quiet
              Don't report abnormal program termination (where command
              is terminated by a signal) or nonzero exit status.

   GNU standard options
       --help Print a usage message on standard output and exit
              successfully.

       -V, --version
              Print version information on standard output, then exit
              successfully.

       --     Terminate option list.

BUGS         top

       Not all resources are measured by all versions of UNIX, so some
       of the values might be reported as zero.  The present selection
       was mostly inspired by the data provided by 4.2 or 4.3BSD.

       GNU time version 1.7 is not yet localized.  Thus, it does not
       implement the POSIX requirements.

       The environment variable TIME was badly chosen.  It is not
       unusual for systems like autoconf(1) or make(1) to use
       environment variables with the name of a utility to override the
       utility to be used.  Uses like MORE or TIME for options to
       programs (instead of program pathnames) tend to lead to
       difficulties.

       It seems unfortunate that -o overwrites instead of appends.
       (That is, the -a option should be the default.)

       Mail suggestions and bug reports for GNU time to
       [email protected].  Please include the version of time, which you
       can get by running

           time --version

       and the operating system and C compiler you used.

SEE ALSO         top

       bash(1), tcsh(1), times(2), wait3(2)

COLOPHON         top

       This page is part of the man-pages (Linux kernel and C library
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Linux man-pages 6.9.1          2024-06-15                        time(1)

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