Easy measure time took in a bash script

note, May 28, 2023 on Mitja Felicijan's blog

In Bash, the $SECONDS variable is a special variable that automatically keeps track of the number of seconds since the current shell or script started executing. It starts counting from the moment the script begins running.

#!/bin/bash

# Reset the timer to zero.
SECONDS=0

# Do something.
sleep 5

# Print the time elapsed.
echo "Time taken: $SECONDS seconds"