Windows Command Line Equivalent to "time" in Linux?

command-line, linux, powershell, windows

Solution

The following is far from perfect. But it's the closest I could come up with to simulate UNIX `time` behavior. I'm sure it can be improved a lot.

Basically I'm creating a cmdlet that receives a script block, generates a process and uses `GetProcessTimes` to get Kernel, User and Elapsed times.

Once the cmdlet is loaded, just invoke it with

`Measure-Time -Command {your-command} [-silent]`

The `-Silent` switch means no output generated from the command (I.e you are interested only in the time measures)

So for example:

Measure-Time -Command {Get-Process;sleep -Seconds 5} -Silent

The output generated:

Kernel time : 0.6084039
User time   : 0.6864044
Elapsed     : 00:00:06.6144000

Here is the cmdlet:

Add-Type -TypeDefinition @" 
using System; 
using System.Runtime.InteropServices;

public class ProcessTime 
{ 
    [DllImport("kernel32.dll", CharSet = CharSet.Unicode)]
    public static extern bool GetProcessTimes(IntPtr handle, 
                                              out IntPtr creation, 
                                              out IntPtr exit, 
                                              out IntPtr kernel,
                                              out IntPtr user);
}
"@

function Measure-Time
{
    [CmdletBinding()]
    param ([scriptblock] $Command,
    [switch] $Silent = $false
    )

    begin
    {
        $creation = 0
        $exit = 0
        $kernel = 0
        $user = 0
        $psi = new-object diagnostics.ProcessStartInfo
        $psi.CreateNoWindow = $true
        $psi.RedirectStandardOutput = $true
        $psi.FileName = "powershell.exe"
        $psi.Arguments = "-command $Command"
        $psi.UseShellExecute = $false
    }
    process
    {
        $proc = [diagnostics.process]::start($psi)
        $buffer = $proc.StandardOutput.ReadToEnd()    

        if (!$Silent)
        {
            Write-Output $buffer
        }
        $proc.WaitForExit()
    }

    end
    {
        $ret = [ProcessTime]::GetProcessTimes($proc.handle,
                                      [ref]$creation,
                                      [ref]$exit,
                                      [ref]$kernel,
                                      [ref]$user
                                      )
        $kernelTime = [long]$kernel/10000000.0
        $userTime = [long]$user/10000000.0
        $elapsed = [datetime]::FromFileTime($exit) - [datetime]::FromFileTime($creation)

        Write-Output "Kernel time : $kernelTime"
        Write-Output "User time   : $userTime"
        Write-Output "Elapsed     : $elapsed"
    }
}

Problem

I've got what might be a dumb question but I can't seem to find the answer anywhere online. In linux based systems, in the terminal typing "time" before any command gives how long the command takes in terms of real, user, and system time. For example, typing ``` time ls ``` lists the files and folders in the current directory then gives the amount of real, user, and system time that it took to list the files and folders. Is there a windows equivalent to this? I am trying to compare the performance of different algorithms but don't have a linux machine to work on so I was hoping that there was a similar command in Windows.

Original source

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