On Wed, 2007-03-14 at 22:35 +0000, Will McDonald wrote: > On 14/03/07, John Summerfield <debian at herakles.homelinux.org> wrote: > > Ryan Simpkins wrote: > > > > > > Am I using time right to measure it? > > No, you're timing the cat only. Correct. > > I don't think that's the case, you know. If I run the following: > > [wmcdonald at stella ~]$ ls -lh /tmp/messages.1 > -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 4.3M Mar 14 20:03 /tmp/messages.1 > [wmcdonald at stella ~]$ time cat /tmp/messages.1 1> /dev/null > > real 0m0.018s > user 0m0.001s > sys 0m0.017s > > [wmcdonald at stella ~]$ time cat /tmp/messages.1 | grep '*.foo' 1> /dev/null > > real 0m0.047s > user 0m0.021s > sys 0m0.026s > > Running both commands repeatedly shows similar time differences, I > think 'time''s timing the execution time of the whole command. I'm unsure, but I think that's wrong? Try time { cat /tmp/messages.1 | grep '*.foo' 1> /dev/null ; } This avoids certain overheads and does the job OP really wants? > > Will. > <snip sig stuff> -- Bill