ZSH: How to time a block of code?

Question

In bash I am able to write a script that contains something like this:

{ time {

#series of commands
echo \"something\"
echo \"another command\"
echo \"blah          


        

Answer 1

You can also use the times POSIX shell builtin in conjunction with functions. It will report the user and system time used by the shell and its children. See http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399/utilities/times.html

Example:

somefunc() {
    code you want to time here
    times
}

The reason for using a shell function is that it creates a new shell context, at the start of which times is all zeros (try it). Otherwise the result contains the contribution of the current shell as well. If that is what you want, forget about the function and put times last in your script.