fpclock – a program measuring process execution time

Author: Paul Lipkowski

• Required: FreePascal Compiler fpc (version 3.0.4 or newer)
• So far works on Linux amd64, MacOS AArch64/ARM64, and Windows x64 only.
• Not designed for 32-bit computers.
• If using Linux, FreeBSD or MacOS, then just compile by executing compile.sh
  • Then you can install fpclock to $PATH using installBash.sh (for Linux users)
• If using Windows, then compile by executing compile.bat
  • The default version of FPC is 3.2.2. If you use the another version of it, then edit the compile.bat script and change the setting containing FPC version (variable ver) in order to match your version.

• Syntax: fpclock 'process' [flags]
• Available flags:
  • (no flag) – Show execution time of COMMAND in seconds with precision of 4 digits and feed the line afterwards
  • -c, --cstring – Input command is C-like formatted (e.g. 'echo \"Hello world\"')
  • -e, --env=E – Choose the environment – E is either cmd (default) or powershell (Windows only)
  • -h, --help – Print help
  • -n, --no-feed-line – Do not feed the line after having shown output
  • -p N, --prec=N – Set precision to N digits (default N=4)
  • -P, --prompt – Prompt for a command from standard input
  • -u U, --units=U – Set measurement unit to U' (see more Us below)
  • -v, --version – Show program version
  • -V, --version-full – Show full program information (version + target)
  • -w , --wait – Pause after measuring time (Windows only)
  • -w N, --wait=N – Wait N milliseconds after measuring time (Windows only, default N=0)
• Available units with their flag values (U):
  • weeks - w or weeks
  • days – d or days
  • hours - h, hr, hrs or hours
  • minutes – m, min, mins or minutes
  • seconds – s, sec, secs or seconds
  • milliseconds – ms, milli or milliseconds
  • microseconds – u, us, μs, mus, micro or microseconds
  • ticks – t, ticks
  • nanoseconds – n, ns, nano or nanoseconds (The stopwatch is accurate to 1 tick = 100 ns though - or 1 μs = 1000 ns, if you use MacOS/FreeBSD)
  • clock – c, clock (output like 00:00:00.0000, amount of decimal numbers depends on prec flag).
• Examples:
  • fpclock 'ls -l'
  • fpclock 'cp ./foo/ ./bar -r' -n
  • fpclock 'cp ./foo/ ./bar -r' -n -p 6 -u ms
  • fpclock 'cp ./foo/ ./bar -r' -n --prec=6 --units=milliseconds