April 21, 2026 | Andy Arthur.org

When you run a command using the Unix time utility, it provides three distinct metrics to help you understand how resources were consumed.

1. Real Time (Wall Clock Time)

Real time is the actual elapsed time from the moment you hit “Enter” until the program finishes. It is exactly what you would measure if you used a physical stopwatch.

Includes: Time spent waiting for data from a disk (I/O), network delays, and time the CPU spent working on other processes.
Analogy: The total time you spent at a restaurant, from walking in the door to walking out.

2. User Time (User CPU Time)

User time is the amount of CPU time spent executing the actual code of your program. This occurs in “User Mode.”

Includes: Mathematical calculations, loops, and logic that don’t require the operating system’s help.
Excludes: Any time the program was “sleeping” or waiting for I/O.
Analogy: The time the chef spent actually chopping vegetables and cooking your specific meal.

3. Sys Time (System CPU Time)

Sys time is the amount of CPU time spent by the operating system kernel on behalf of your program. This occurs in “Kernel Mode.”

Includes: Tasks like opening files, reading/writing to disk, allocating memory, and handling network connections.
Analogy: The time the restaurant manager spent finding you a table, processing your credit card, or coordinating with the kitchen.

Understanding the Ratios

You can diagnose performance bottlenecks by comparing these three numbers:

Scenario	Meaning
Real > (User + Sys)	The program is I/O bound. It spent most of its time waiting for the disk, network, or other processes.
Real ≈ (User + Sys)	The program is CPU bound. It used the processor almost continuously from start to finish.
Real < (User + Sys)	The program is Multi-threaded. Multiple CPU cores were working simultaneously, so the total “work time” exceeded the “elapsed time.”

Practical Example

If you run time sleep 10, you will see:

Real: ~10.0s (The actual time you waited)
User: ~0.0s (The CPU did no work for your code)
Sys: ~0.0s (The kernel did no work for your code)

For further technical details on how these are gathered via system calls like getrusage(), you can refer to the official Linux man pages for time. Use tools like top or htop to monitor these values in real-time for active processes.

Day: April 21, 2026💾

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It’s about time ⌛

1. Real Time (Wall Clock Time)

2. User Time (User CPU Time)

3. Sys Time (System CPU Time)

Understanding the Ratios

Practical Example

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