Weird with time command verbose option

[Ian Bruntlett]

Hi Robert,

On Thu, 10 Jul 2025 at 19:59, Robert Moskowitz via ubuntu-users <
ubuntu-users at lists.ubuntu.com> wrote:

> I use time --verbose in conjunction with rsync a lot, but it has been
> from my Fedora systems.  Just now trying it on Ubuntu.
>
> after a bunch of failures, i figured out path is important...
>
> $ time --verbose /usr/bin/ls
> --verbose: command not found
>
> real    0m0.114s
> user    0m0.089s
> sys    0m0.026s
>
> fails.
>
> $ /usr/bin/time --verbose /usr/bin/ls
> public_html  rsync.pswd
>
> real    0m0.002s
> user    0m0.002s
> sys    0m0.001s
>
> works
>
> Is time a bash internal command as well as the external one?
>
> btw, I have been using time --verbose in crontab jobs where full path is
> needed.  I was testing out something new and was not bothering with the
> full path and throwing that error....
>

This thing bit me when I was timing the runtime of a tar command. Simple
use of time worked no problem. Do anything a bit more demanding and time
would complain and, like you, I had to specify the path to the time command.

There are 2 bash built-in commands I suggest you take a look at:

1. type
Displays information about command type.

2. help
Displays information about built-in commands

And this normal command "which", which tells you the pathname of a command.
See "man which for" more information.

HTH,


Ian

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