'time' question

exit3219 · 11-24-2005, 09:59 AM

The 'time' command runs a program and then summarizes it's resources usage.
I have a really silly question:
How do I send arguments like '--verbose' to the time command?
Here's what I get:

Code:

exit@orclopes:~/Desktop/scor$ time --verbose ls
bash: --verbose: command not found

real    0m0.001s
user    0m0.000s
sys     0m0.001s
exit@orclopes:~/Desktop/scor$ time ls --verbose
ls: unrecognised option `--verbose'
Try `ls --help' for more information.

real    0m0.009s
user    0m0.007s
sys     0m0.000s
exit@orclopes:~/Desktop/scor$

Thanks everyone.

Ygrex · 11-24-2005, 11:33 AM

Good question, it is impossible

It is not a fact, but no of the examples
from manpage work. When I tried to do it myself I could not specify any
parametres to the 'time' tool.

vladmihaisima · 11-24-2005, 12:08 PM

There are two different 'time'-s.

One is the shell time command which doesn't accept the parameters you saw on the man page.

To call the command 'time' use '/usr/bin/time' instead of just 'time' (of course you must have it installed on the system)

Hko · 11-25-2005, 06:14 AM

Yes.
When you use bash as the shell, options do not work because "time" is also a bash keyword (wich does not take options).

From "man time":

Quote:

Users of the bash shell need to use an explicit path in order to run the external time command and not the shell builtin variant.

So this does not work:

Code:

bash$ time --verbose sleep 1

But this does:

Code:

bash$ /usr/bin/time --verbose sleep 1

Because in the latter example, you are explicitly calling the program "time", instead of the bash keyword.

exit3219 · 11-25-2005, 08:00 AM

Thanks a lot. I didn't notice that line in the man page.

(Note to myself: RTFM!)