Bash script to calculate time elapsed

Question

I am writing a script in bash to calculate the time elapsed for the execution of my commands, consider:

STARTTIME=$(date +%s)
#command block that takes time to c         


        

Answer 1

You are trying to execute the number in the ENDTIME as a command. You should also see an error like 1370306857: command not found. Instead use the arithmetic expansion:

echo "It takes $(($ENDTIME - $STARTTIME)) seconds to complete this task..."

You could also save the commands in a separate script, commands.sh, and use time command:

time commands.sh