The
utility
executes and
times the specified
utility
After the
utility
finishes,
writes to the standard error stream,
(in seconds):
the total time elapsed,
the time used to execute the
utility
process and the time consumed by system overhead.
The following options are available:
-a
If the
-o
flag is used, append to the specified file rather than overwriting
it.
Otherwise, this option has no effect.
-h
Print times in a human friendly format.
Times are printed in minutes, hours,
etc. as appropriate.
-l
The contents of the
rusage
structure are printed as well.
-o file
Write the output to
file
instead of stderr.
If
file
exists and the
-a
flag is not specified, the file will be overwritten.
-p
Makes
output POSIX.2 compliant (each time is printed on its own line).
Some shells may provide a builtin
command which is similar or identical to this utility.
Consult the
builtin(1)
manual page.
If
receives a
SIGINFO
(see the status argument for
stty(1))
signal, the current time the given command is running will be written to the
standard output.
ENVIRONMENT
The
PATH
environment variable is used to locate the requested
utility
if the name contains no
`/'
characters.
EXIT STATUS
If
utility
could be timed successfully, its exit status is returned.
If
utility
terminated abnormally, a warning message is output to stderr.
If the
utility
was found but could not be run, the exit status is 126.
If no
utility
could be found at all, the exit status is 127.
If
encounters any other error, the exit status is between 1 and 125
included.
