Shell script to get the time difference

by nixcraft on May 2, 2006 · 19 comments

Q. I am able to write PHP or Perl script where I can find out time difference between script executions. Now I have .shtml file that is nothing but a shell script outputting some data to browser. What I want is time difference or time it took to execute a script. How do I write a shell script?

A. Your Logic should be as follows:

* Get start time and store to a variable START

* Execute a shell script

* Grab output and send to web browser

* Get time again and store to a variable END

* Calculate difference using expression END - START

Shell script o get the time difference

Here is small script that does the same thing (please note that script teated on GNU/Linux and with GNU date command only):
$ vi timediff.bash
Append text as follows:

#!/bin/bash
START=$(date +%s)
# do something
# start your script work here
ls -R /etc > /tmp/x
rm -f /tmp/x
# your logic ends here
END=$(date +%s)
DIFF=$(( $END - $START ))
echo "It took $DIFF seconds"

Save and execute the script as follows:
$ chmod +x timediff.bash
Execute the script:
$ ./timediff.bash
Output:

It took 4 seconds

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{ 19 comments… read them below or add one }

1 Anonymous May 8, 2006

What ifmy script takes mili seconds to execute and I want to be able to measure the time difference even if it is few micro seconds or mili seconds.

Thanks,

Ananda

Reply

2 Anonymous August 22, 2006

instead of
$(date +%s)
use
$(date +%s%N)

and you will get nanoseconds precision


Mitsuhashi Da! Oboeteoke!

Reply

3 satish asnani March 25, 2007

i need to find the no.of days between system date and the date of file creation. how do i achieve this?

Reply

4 pavana August 16, 2007

i need to find the no.of days and time between system date and the date of file creation. how do i achieve this?

Reply

5 Raj September 12, 2007

Hi, you time diff script doesn’t work. date +%s returns only %s as value. And thus it does not work forward.

Reply

6 Ratna September 14, 2007

The above mentioned script will not work because “%s” is given in small letter.
Replace “%s” with “%S” and the script will work.

Reply

7 seema October 23, 2007

can i have the similar script in k-shell

Reply

8 Johannes May 8, 2008

Cool script, thanks!

Reply

9 ESWAR September 29, 2008

write a shell script pow(a,b)
eg a=2
b=3
how to to write this program.

Reply

10 Nathan December 16, 2008

Wow! its really cool :)

Reply

11 Achala February 21, 2009

How do i find time difference between two file .
Example: One file created at Wed Feb 18 10:08:34 IST 2009.And Anothe file created at
Wed Feb 18 23:32:36 IST 2009. How do i find difference between Wed Feb 18 23:32:36 IST 2009 – Wed Feb 18 10:08:34 IST 2009 ?
Please Help

Reply

12 shiva April 30, 2009

nice script…. good
thaqs

Reply

13 Yogesh June 2, 2009

Good one !!!

Reply

14 Jax April 11, 2010

Thanks for the script mate. It was of great help to me.

Reply

15 Mary Monahan October 12, 2010

Just a comment:
%s does not work on Solaris. %S does, but it only returns the seconds part of the date-time, not the number of seconds since 00:00:00, Jan 1, 1970 so you would have to deal with the math of changes in minutes, hours and the turn over from 59 to 0.

Reply

16 jules March 5, 2011

@Achala
difference between 2 files in seconds:
use date -r for the modification date of the file and +%s for date in seconds:
Example 2 files bobo.png and foobar.ppm
echo `date -r bobo.png +%s`-`date -r foobar.ppm +%s` | bc
8411376
echo “8411376/(24*3600)”|bc -l
97.35388888888888888888
So 97 days between these files.

Reply

17 Vinod September 27, 2011

It was of great help to me…………….Thanx.

Reply

18 xofer April 5, 2011

Stumbled upon this example. The script in article is all very fine as a script exercise, but it does not follow bash logic. If you want to get the running time of – lets say – a_long_process
you just execute:
time a_long_process
simple, isn’t it? For more options check: man time

Reply

19 solo October 10, 2011

Is it possible to do this with the use of the time() command?

Reply

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