Windows equivalent to UNIX "time" command

So, Unix has a time command that lets users time their code/other things. I was wondering if the Windows command line has anything similar.

Also, I asked a previous question regarding the Linux command line here. Can we do the same for Windows? If so, how?

Use Powershell

Measure-Command {start-process whateveryouwantexecute -Wait}

Edited to your need @efficiencylsBliss:

Measure-Command {start-process java -argumentlist "whateverargumentisneeded" -wait}

I'm using Win XP, for some reason, timeit.exe is not working for me. I found another alternative: ptime:

ptime 1.0 - Accurately measure program execution time

ptime will run any specified command and parameters, and measure the execution time (run time) in seconds, accurate to 5 millisecond or better. It is an automatic process timer, or program timer used for benchmark purposes.

You can cheat a little with a batch script...

@echo off
echo %time% < nul
cmd /c %1
echo %time% < nul

Then run your program as an argument to this script...

timer myprogram.exe

and for arguments...

timer "myprogram.exe -sw1 -sw2"

example output:

17:59:20.02
some text
17:59:20.03

place the batch script somewhere in your PATH variable, e.g. C:\Windows\System32 and name it timer.cmd. Of course there is a small performance hit of forking a second cmd instance, although very minimal.

For ease of use, here is the chocolatey package: https://chocolatey.org/packages/ptime C:/> choco install ptime

The advantage if ptime is that it acts like the unix version and yields the console output, which Measure-Command { XXX } does not (or at least I don't know how to do that).

Some coffee helped me come up with this:

function time { $Command = "$args"; Measure-Command { Invoke-Expression $Command 2>&1 | out-default} }

And if you want it to output nothing, just replace with out-null:

function timequiet { $Command = "$args"; Measure-Command { Invoke-Expression $Command 2>&1 | out-null} }

You use it like this:

PS C:\> time sleep 5


Days              : 0
Hours             : 0
Minutes           : 0
Seconds           : 4
Milliseconds      : 990
Ticks             : 49906722
TotalDays         : 5,77624097222222E-05
TotalHours        : 0,00138629783333333
TotalMinutes      : 0,08317787
TotalSeconds      : 4,9906722
TotalMilliseconds : 4990,6722



PS C:\>