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TIME(1)                       Linux User's Manual                      TIME(1)
NAME
       time - time a simple command or give resource usage
SYNOPSIS
       time [options] command [arguments...]
DESCRIPTION
       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 statis-
       tics consist of (i) the elapsed real time between invocation and termi-
       nation, (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
       -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
       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
       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.  The remaining ones for the text  and  for-
       matting of the output.
GNU VERSION
       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  for-
       mat  string that can be specified using the -f option or the TIME envi-
       ronment 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 char-
       acters  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  com-
              mand 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.
   GNU standard options
       --help Print a usage message on standard output and exit successfully.
       -V, --version
              Print version information on standard output, then exit success-
              fully.
       --     Terminate option list.
BUGS
       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
       bug-utils AT prep.edu.   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
       bash(1), tcsh(1), times(2), wait3(2)
COLOPHON
       This page is part of release 4.15 of the Linux  man-pages  project.   A
       description  of  the project, information about reporting bugs, and the
       latest    version    of    this    page,    can     be     found     at
       https://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/.
                                  2017-09-15                           TIME(1)