PTIME(1)

💖 PTIME(1) 💖

okay so bestie, welcome to ptime — she's a General Commands Manual girlie and her whole entire job is literally just timing a command. iconic behavior, no cap. ✨

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🌸 NAME 🌸

ptime — time a command ⏱️

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🎀 SYNOPSIS 🎀

ptime command [arg]...
ptime -p pidlist

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✨ DESCRIPTION ✨

So like, if you don't pass -p, ptime runs the command you gave her with all the args you gave her, and then when that command is done-doing-its-thing, she writes the timing statistics to standard error. that's it, that's the whole vibe. 💅

If you do pass -p, she switches modes and shows you a snapshot of the accumulated timing statistics for the processes you named. main character energy fr fr.

the good stuff (aka when /proc/[pid]/schedstat is available): the output includes nanosecond-precision scheduling statistics, which is giving precision:

• cpu — on-CPU run time
• lat — run-queue wait time
• slp — all other sleep time, computed as real minus cpu minus lat

...plus each component's percentage of real time. 🌈

Now listen, a trailing * means the value came from a lower-precision source — but the percentages stay relative to real, so don't stress. 🫶

With -p, both real and slp carry a trailing * because the process start time from /proc is recorded in clock ticks (typically 10ms granularity). and the user and sys values always carry a trailing * because they're derived from clock-tick counters when reading from /proc, or from microsecond-precision rusage when timing a command directly. 🙈

heads up bestie: these values may not sum exactly to cpu. it's not a bug, it's just how the math math's. 💀

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💅 OPTIONS 💅

• -p pidlist — display a snapshot of timing statistics for the specified processes. the pidlist is a list of process IDs separated by commas, whitespace, or any combination of the two (e.g., "1,2", "1, 2", "1 2"). slay. ✨

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🦋 OPERANDS 🦋

• command — the command to execute. go off king. 👑
• arg — arguments to the command. 🍓
• pidlist — a list of process IDs separated by commas, whitespace, or any combination of the two. A /proc/pid path may also be used, which means shell expansions like /proc/* can target all processes on the system. (yes, ALL of them. she's brave like that. 🧚)

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🌟 EXIT STATUS 🌟

okay so exit status tea, let's get into it:

• if the command is invoked successfully, ptime(1) returns the exit status of the command ✅
• if the command is terminated by a signal, ptime(1) returns 128 plus the signal number 💀
• if the command is not found, ptime(1) returns 127 😭
• if the command is found but cannot be invoked, ptime(1) returns 126 🙈
• if an error occurs in ptime(1) itself, ptime(1) returns 1 🫠

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🌈 FILES 🌈

• /proc/pid/* — process information and control files. that's where the lore lives. 📁

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⭐ SEE ALSO ⭐

time(1), proc(5) — go read those too, they're lowkey obsessed with each other.

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made with love by ptime 0.2.23, dated September 2026 — that's the version and the date bestie, write it down, periodt. 💖 stay timed, stay iconic, mwah 🎀✨