How do I measure execution time of a command on the Windows command line?

windows batch-file time cmd windows-server-2003

477,546

Solution 1

PowerShell has a cmdlet for this called Measure-Command. You'll have to ensure that PowerShell is available on the machine that runs it.

PS> Measure-Command { echo hi }

Days              : 0
Hours             : 0
Minutes           : 0
Seconds           : 0
Milliseconds      : 0
Ticks             : 1318
TotalDays         : 1.52546296296296E-09
TotalHours        : 3.66111111111111E-08
TotalMinutes      : 2.19666666666667E-06
TotalSeconds      : 0.0001318
TotalMilliseconds : 0.1318

Measure-Command captures the command's output. You can redirect the output back to your console using Out-Default:

PS> Measure-Command { echo hi | Out-Default }
hi

Days              : 0
...

As Makotoe commented, Measure-Command returns a TimeSpan object, so the measured time is printed as a bunch of fields. You can format the object into a timestamp string using ToString():

PS> (Measure-Command { echo hi | Out-Default }).ToString()
hi
00:00:00.0001318

If the command inside Measure-Command changes your console text color, use [Console]::ResetColor() to reset it back to normal.

Solution 2

Hehe, the most simple solution might be this:

echo %time%
YourApp.exe
echo %time%

This works on every Windows out of the box.

In case of an application using console output, it might be convenient to store the starting time in a temporary variable:

set startTime=%time%
YourApp.exe
echo Start Time: %startTime%
echo Finish Time: %time%

Solution 3

Just a little expansion of the answer from Casey.K about using the Measure-Command from PowerShell:

You can invoke PowerShell from the standard command prompt, like this:
```
powershell -Command "Measure-Command {echo hi}"
```
This will eat the standard output, but you can prevent that by adding | Out-Default like this from PowerShell:
```
Measure-Command {echo hi | Out-Default}
```
Or from a command prompt:
```
powershell -Command "Measure-Command {echo hi | Out-Default}"
```

Of course, you're free to wrap this in a script file *.ps1 or *.bat.

Solution 4

The one-liner I use in Windows Server 2008 R2 is:

cmd /v:on /c "echo !TIME! & *mycommand* & echo !TIME!"

So long as mycommand doesn't require quotes (which screws with cmd's quote processing). The /v:on is to allow for the two different TIME values to be evaluated independently rather than once at the execution of the command.

Solution 5

If you have a command window open and call the commands manually, you can display a timestamp on each prompt, e.g.

prompt $d $t $_$P$G

It gives you something like:

23.03.2009 15:45:50,77

C:\>

If you have a small batch script that executes your commands, have an empty line before each command, e.g.

(empty line)

myCommand.exe

(next empty line)

myCommand2.exe

You can calculate the execution time for each command by the time information in the prompt. The best would probably be to pipe the output to a textfile for further analysis: