The efficiency and effectiveness of any task or process are measured by the time parameter. A good processor with good processing speed is also judged over time.

In Linux, the time command is used to determine how long a command runs, and it prints a real-time summary.

And here is a guide to using the time command in Linux.

Syntax of time command

$ time [options] [command]

For example:

$ time sleep 2

Output:

In the above example, we created a dummy job that lasts 2 seconds.

Explanation:

real: the actual time that the computer’s processor executes the instruction

user: the time the command has been executed since the Enter key was pressed

sys: the amount of time the system or kernel takes to execute the command

Examples

1. -p: display the time in POSIX format

$ time -p sleep 2

Output:

2. update the repository

$ time sudo apt update

Output:

Conclusion

Above is a tutorial on how to use the time command in Linux.

Thank you for reading.