Question

How would I make a bash script to tell me the time it takes between a message returned and a user pressing any key after that? Thank you.

Answer 1

A basic implementation for the enter key and giving time in seconds:

t0=`date +%s`
echo Press enter...
read
t1=`date +%s`

echo Elapsed: $[$t1-$t0]

replacing %s with %s%N would measure nanoseconds. (%N gives nanoseconds padded with zeroes)

On some platforms, this may work to catch the “any key”:

stty cbreak
t0=`date +%s%N`
echo Press any key...
dd bs=1 count=1 of=/dev/null 2>/dev/null
t1=`date +%s%N`

echo Elapsed: $[($t1-$t0)/1000000] microseconds