'time' does not recognise any options

[Ramon Casha]

Binary package hint: time

Ubuntu 7.10
time: 1.7-21build1

The 'time' command is described in its man page as recognising a number of options, such as -a or -f. However these do not work - time attempts to interpret them as commands.

eg:
----------------
time -f "%e" ls
bash: -f: command not found

real 0m0.236s
user 0m0.128s
sys 0m0.028s
----------------

[Lars Ljung (larslj)]

Thanks for the bug report. I was about to confirm this but... There is a built-in command in bash with the same name, so you have to call /usr/bin/time explicitly.

[Ramon Casha (rcasha)]

Dayum that was well hidden! :)

I wonder whether something should be done about it... whether anything CAN be done about it. Maybe a warning in the man page or something.

[Lars Ljung (larslj)]

Actually it's already in the man page: "Users of the bash shell need to use an explicit path in order to run the external time command and not the shell builtin variant." I think you can mark this bug as invalid.

[Andrew (andrewkvalheim)]

This was driving me crazy until I found the above explanation. Well hidden indeed!

I stuck the following in my .bashrc for convenience:

        alias time=$(which time)