xref: /freebsd/usr.bin/time/time.1 (revision 380a989b3223d455375b4fae70fd0b9bdd43bafb)
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32.\"     @(#)time.1	8.1 (Berkeley) 6/6/93
33.\"
34.Dd June 6, 1993
35.Dt TIME 1
36.Os BSD 4
37.Sh NAME
38.Nm time
39.Nd time command execution
40.Sh SYNOPSIS
41.Nm
42.Op Fl al
43.Op Fl o Ar file
44.Ar command
45.Sh DESCRIPTION
46The
47.Nm
48utility
49executes and
50times
51.Ar command
52by initiating a timer and passing the
53.Ar command
54to the
55shell.
56After the
57.Ar command
58finishes,
59.Nm
60writes to the standard error stream,
61(in seconds):
62the total time elapsed,
63time consumed by system overhead,
64and the time used to execute the
65.Ar command
66process.
67.Pp
68Available options:
69.Bl -tag -width Ds
70.It Fl a
71If the
72.Fl o
73flag is used, append to the specified file rather than overwriting
74it. Otherwise, this option has no effect.
75.It Fl l
76The contents of the
77.Em rusage
78structure are printed as well.
79.It Fl o Ar file
80Write the output to
81.Ar file
82instead of stderr.  If
83.Ar file
84exists and the
85.Fl a
86flag is not specified, the file will be overwritten.
87.El
88.Pp
89The
90.Xr csh 1
91has its own and syntactically different builtin version of
92.Nm time .
93The command described here
94is available as
95.Pa /usr/bin/time
96to
97.Xr csh
98users.
99.Sh SEE ALSO
100.Xr csh 1 ,
101.Xr getrusage 2 ,
102.Xr wait 2
103.Sh HISTORY
104A
105.Nm
106command appeared in
107.At v6 .
108