timing a process

[Jennifer Young_1]

i have a process that cron runs, and i need to find out the time that it takes to run each morning. if i replace the cron job
/the/script
with:
time /the/script >> /stats/file
it doesnt work, probably because the standard output of this command is the output of the script, not the time command. anyone know how i can manage this? im not able to run the script on my own and time the result, as it has to run at a specific time. thanks

[James R. Ferguson · Accepted solution]

Clint:

# time script_name > /tmp/log 2>&1

would place your output and the time results (stderr) into /tmp/log.

# time script_name > /tmp/log 2> /tmp/errlog

would keep the script output and the time statistics in separate files.

...JRF...

[Dave Wherry]

You can also preface your command with the timex command. It reports "in seconds the elapsed time, user time and system time spent in execution of the given command".
Use it just as the examples James gave for the time coomand. I've used timex often and it works very well.

[Jennifer Young_1]

thanks James and Dave, for the speedy responses.