Time difference between two date command, How?

[Sachin Patel]

Hi All,
I have a script that runs for couple minutes to couple hours. I am trying to find out total time this script runs.
I have put a variable start_time=`date` at the begining of the script and end_time=`date` at the end. From this How can I get the total time.

Sachin

[Sridhar Bhaskarla]

Sachin,

Did you think of the command "timex"?.

timex script

-Sri

[harry d brown jr]

Sri,

I was thinking the same thing!

live free or die
harry

[S.K. Chan]

# man time
I've used this in the past ..

[A. Clay Stephenson · Accepted solution]

The easiest method is to do this:
START=$(perl -e 'print time;')
do your stuff
FINISH=$(perl -e 'print time;')

These will return the time in epoch seconds; the elasped time is simply the difference between them.

[MANOJ SRIVASTAVA]

Hi Sachin

timex < command > will give you the total time in terms of real usr system taken by the command.

Manoj Srivastava

[harry d brown jr]

Clay, I like the way you think! great answer!

live free or die
harry

[Tom Danzig]

If you're using ksh or sh, at the end of the script put:

echo Total elasped time in seconds = $SECONDS

This is a built in variable that starts at zero when the script (or shell) starts. You can echo this at any point in the script to get elapsed time so far in the execution.

[Sachin Patel]

Hi Clay,
I am using perl now. It is working fine. I have read your previous answer (Same command) regarding some time question but It didn't make me sense there.

Sachin