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Date: Thu, 14 Aug 2003 18:49:20 +0200
To: "Charles Howse" <chowse@charter.net>,
	<freebsd-questions@freebsd.org>
From: Alexander Haderer <alexander.haderer@charite.de>
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Subject: RE: Using bc in bash script
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At 11:45 14.08.2003 -0500, Charles Howse wrote:
> > > Can I refine it to give me something like: .784 seconds?
> >
> > Use "bc -l" instead of bc.  That should do it.
>
>No, that still gives 0 seconds.
>
>I think this whole thing is dependent on the fact that `date +%s`
>reports integers.
>
>I'm still interested in something like .874 seconds, but for the time
>being, I'll just use an if..then..else to say "less than 1 second" or
>the actual number of seconds.
>
>I've looked at the time command suggested by Jez, haven't tried it yet.

Note the trap: shell's builtin "time" command differs somewhat from 
installed "/usr/bin/time"!

man time
man builtin
man <your_shell>

Alexander