[BusyBox] Using time applet?

[Rob Landley]

On Friday 31 October 2003 11:48, Vladimir N. Oleynik wrote:
> Steven,
>
> > on my Host I can do
> >
> > scholz at pinguin:/tftpboot> time bunzip2 -c test.bz2 > /dev/null
> >
> > and get
> >
> > real    0m5.858s
> > user    0m5.820s
> > sys     0m0.040s
> >
> > On busybox (serial console & via telnet) I don't see the results!
> >
> > /var/tmp # time bunzip2 -c test.bz2 > /dev/null
> > /var/tmp #
> >
> > Are they redirected to /dev/null as well?
> >
> > Is that a bug, a feature or a "problem between keyboard and chair"?
>
> Its bug and feature ;-)

I regularly have trouble understanding your english, so here goes...

> ash unsuport "time" function, only times support.

I have no idea what that means.  /usr/bin/time is an executable.  Possibly the 
busybox version is outputting to stdout instead of stderr?  Or the behavior 
is strange if it's built as a standalone shell?

> Regular "time" output to stderr, but more featured shell dont redirect
> stderr for time output message.

"more featured"?  What would it be TRYING to accomplish with such behavior?  
And he's not redirecting 2.  He's redirecting 1.

> The demonstration is:
>
> time cmd 2> out
> don`t output "time" message to out
> but
> (time cmd) 2> out
> time output message saved to "out" file.

So you're saying a buggy shell somehow snapshots the stderr filehandle and 
outputs directly to that, ignoring whatever redirection occurs?  That's 
actively stupid.

However, I don't see how that relates to Steven's problem...

Rob