change time man page

[TTr]

I see. You want to count seconds using base 10, where the time format uses base 60. Well you have to convert ot base 10 as you mentioned.

[Bill Hassell]

While the man page says seconds, if you saw some time output like this:

real 45296.7
user 5678.9
sys 1744.0

would it be more useful? By common convention, the ":" character separates hours, minutes and seconds. Of course, there may be a different method used in a different country or language (see man environ, specifically LC_TIME). The time program always shows seconds until 59.9, then shows mins:secs until 59:59.9 and then shows hrs:mins:secs. Computers are quite happy with 45296.7 but humans are more comfortable with 12:34:56.7

[James R. Ferguson]

Hi Brem:

To add to Bill's discussion, here's a little Perl snippet to convert a time format of H:M:S.f to seconds:

# TIME=12:34:56.7
# echo ${TIME} | perl -nle '@t=reverse split /:/;for (1,60,3600) {$sec+=$t[$i]*$_;$i++};END{print $sec}'
45296.7

This works equally well for only minutes and seconds, too, like:

# TIME=3:11.8
# echo ${TIME} | perl ...
191.8

Regards!

...JRF...
Regards!

...JRF...