[Bug 660655] Re: time command doesnt recognize it's own arguments

[Lonnie Lee Best]

This bug was submitted almost a decade ago and it is still an issue on
the latest Ubuntu! I guess know one knows where or how to fix it? It
seems like it would be a simple thing to fix. What's the problem?

You shouldn't have to type in the full path of a command to pass
arguments to it!

-- 
You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu
Foundations Bugs, which is subscribed to time in Ubuntu.
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/660655

Title:
  time command doesnt recognize it's own arguments

Status in time package in Ubuntu:
  Opinion

Bug description:
  Binary package hint: time

  I was trying to use the 'time' command today to get execution time from a few different programs. It seems to work just fine so long as you just invoke it as 'time COMMAND COMMAND-ARGS'... however I wanted to get more verbose output, and eventually output to a file. From the 'time' man page:
  --------------------------------------
   -o FILE, --output=FILE
                Write  the  resource  use  statistics  to FILE instead of to the
                standard error stream.  By default, this  overwrites  the  file,
                destroying  the file's previous contents.  This option is useful
                for collecting information on interactive programs and  programs
                that produce output on the standard error stream.
  --------------------------------------
  and....
  --------------------------------------
         -v, --verbose
                Use  the  built-in verbose format, which displays each available
                piece of information on the program's resource use  on  its  own
                line, with an English description of its meaning.

  --------------------------------------
  so... I tried calling 'time' first like so:   "time -v octave test.m"
  which returns:
  --------------------------------------
  -v: command not found

  real	0m0.989s
  user	0m0.190s
  sys	0m0.070s
  --------------------------------------
  I also tried the long version:
  --------------------------------------
  $ time --verbose octave test.m
  --verbose: command not found

  real	0m0.200s
  user	0m0.150s
  sys	0m0.060s
  --------------------------------------

  what??? even the version command doesnt work:

  --------------------------------------
  $ time --version
  --version: command not found

  real	0m0.202s
  user	0m0.170s
  sys	0m0.040s
  --------------------------------------

  This is a significant issue for my project, since I need to output
  timing data for a lot of different commands, and I really dont want to
  copy-paste them all manually from the terminal, and redirecting the
  error stream (for time's info) isnt an option because I need to
  collect the program output as well, and it would be significantly
  difficult to extract the timing data from those files after the fact.

  ProblemType: Bug
  DistroRelease: Ubuntu 10.04
  Package: time 1.7-23build1
  ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.32-25.44-generic 2.6.32.21+drm33.7
  Uname: Linux 2.6.32-25-generic x86_64
  NonfreeKernelModules: wl
  Architecture: amd64
  Date: Thu Oct 14 11:51:53 2010
  ProcEnviron:
   LANG=en_US.utf8
   SHELL=/bin/bash
  SourcePackage: time

To manage notifications about this bug go to:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/time/+bug/660655/+subscriptions