Two "time" commands?

[Matt Hearn]

Hey guys, I'm running HPUX 11.23 on an rx6600, and I'm noticing strange behavior when I use the "time" command. If I specify /usr/bin/time, I get values with one decimal place, and can redirect the stderr:

# /usr/bin/time sleep 3 2>test
# cat test

real 3.0
user 0.0
sys 0.0

If I don't specify the full path, and just use "time" by itself, I get two decimals and the stderr won't redirect:

# time sleep 3 2>test

real 0m3.02s
user 0m0.00s
sys 0m0.00s
# cat test
#

I assumed that there must be two versions of "time" available, and my path finds the 2-decimal one first, but:

# which time
/usr/bin/time

Huh? I'm very confused. Anybody know how I can capture the 2-decimal output of "time"?

[Pete Randall]

Matt,

Sure seems like two different commands. Try "whence time", "whereis time", "type time" to see if you can find something other than /usr/bin/time.


Pete

[James R. Ferguson]

Hi:

There is 'time' and 'timex'. One posibility is that your 'time' has been aliased to 'timex'.

# alias time timex

As Pete suggesed, do:

# whence -v time

You might see:

time is an alias for timex

Regards!

...JRF...

[Matt Hearn]

# whence time
time
# whereis time
time: /usr/bin/time /usr/share/man/man1.Z/time.1 /usr/share/man/man2.Z/time.2
# type time
time is a keyword

I do have an alias that "type=whence -v", for whatever reason.

[Torsten.]

What is your shell? ksh?

Sounds like a solution:

http://docs.hp.com/en/B2355-60103/ksh.1.html

...

time pipeline
pipeline is executed and the elapsed time, user time, and system time are printed on standard error. Note that the time keyword can appear anywhere in the pipeline to time the entire pipeline. To time a particular command in a pipeline, see time(1).

...

[Pete Randall]

> "time is a keyword"

That's interesting (maybe). On my 11.11 box, I get:

# type time
time is /usr/bin/time

Does anybody know what is meant by "keyword"?


Pete

[Patrick Wallek]

>>Does anybody know what is meant by "keyword"?

That means it is a shell built-in command.

Try doing a 'type while' and you will get the same thing.

I'm not sure why you'd be getting that in this case though.

[Pete Randall]

Ahhhh, I see! It's a shell keyword. Right in the man page:

"Note that the shell also has a keyword time that times an entire pipeline if used anywhere in the pipeline, unlike time(1) command which times a particular command if used in a pipeline."

So your first result is from the command /usr/bin/time and the second result is from the shell (ksh or csh, by the way) keyword.


Pete

[Torsten.]

with sh:

# whence time
/usr/bin/time

# type time
time is /usr/bin/time


with ksh:

# whence time
time

# type time
time is a keyword


Sounds reasonable ...

[James R. Ferguson]

Hi (again):

What shell are you using?

For the Posix shell (on a PA-RISC 11.23 box), a shell-builtin (like 'test') looks like:

# whence -v time
time is /usr/bin/time
# whence -v test
test is a shell builtin.

It would be interesting to see your shell aliases too:

# alias

Regards!

...JRF...