Print execution time of a shell command

time is a built-in command in most shells that writes execution time information to the tty.

You could also try something like

start_time=`date +%s`
<command-to-execute>
end_time=`date +%s`
echo execution time was `expr $end_time - $start_time` s.

Or in bash:

start_time=`date +%s`
<command-to-execute> && echo run time is $(expr `date +%s` - $start_time) s