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man pages section 1: User Commands

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Updated: July 2017
 
 

timex(1)

Name

timex - time a command; report process data and system activity

Synopsis

timex [-o] [-p [-fhkmrt]] [-s] command

Description

The given command is executed; the elapsed time, user time and system time spent in execution are reported in seconds. Optionally, process accounting data for the command and all its children can be listed or summarized, and total system activity during the execution interval can be reported.

The output of timex is written on standard error.

Options

The following options are supported:

–o

Report the total number of blocks read or written and total characters transferred by command and all its children. This option works only if the process accounting software is installed.

–p

List process accounting records for command and all its children. This option works only if the process accounting software is installed. Suboptions f, h, k, m, r, and t modify the data items reported. The options are as follows:

–f

Print the fork(2)/ exec(2) flag and system exit status columns in the output.

–h

Instead of mean memory size, show the fraction of total available CPU time consumed by the process during its execution. This ``hog factor'' is computed as (total CPU time)/(elapsed time).

–k

Instead of memory size, show total kcore-minutes.

–m

Show mean core size (the default).

–r

Show CPU factor (user time/(system-time + user-time)).

–t

Show separate system and user CPU times. The number of blocks read or written and the number of characters transferred are always reported.

–s

Report total system activity (not just that due to command) that occurred during the execution interval of command. All the data items listed in sar(1) are reported.

Examples

Example 1 Examples of timex.

A simple example:

example% timex –opssleep 60

A terminal session of arbitrary complexity can be measured by timing a sub-shell:

example% timex –opskmtsh
      session commands
EOT

Attributes

See attributes(5) for descriptions of the following attributes:

ATTRIBUTE TYPE
ATTRIBUTE VALUE
Availability
system/accounting/legacy-accounting

See Also

sar(1), time(1), exec(2), fork(2), times(2), attributes(5)

Notes

Process records associated with command are selected from the accounting file /var/adm/pacct by inference, since process genealogy is not available. Background processes having the same user ID, terminal ID, and execution time window will be spuriously included.