How to enable the time command on Raspbian

[Bosse_B]

I want to time a command that may run for upwards of an hour and I have done so many times using the 'time' command:

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time command arguments

When command has finished it outputs the total execution time.

But now when I want to time the creation of a backup image file on my RPi3 it cannot find time...
So my question:
If time is unavailable, how can one re-enable it?

It seems like time is not a command that can be located using this in an RPi where time can actually be used:

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which time

Output is empty...

[trejan]

There is nothing to enable or install. time is a shell built-in command for bash and others.

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$ help time
time: time [-p] pipeline
    Report time consumed by pipeline's execution.
    
    Execute PIPELINE and print a summary of the real time, user CPU time,
    and system CPU time spent executing PIPELINE when it terminates.
    
    Options:
      -p        print the timing summary in the portable Posix format
    
    The value of the TIMEFORMAT variable is used as the output format.
    
    Exit Status:
    The return status is the return status of PIPELINE.

[jbudd]

It seems like time is not a command that can be located using this in an RPi where time can actually be used:

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which time

Output is empty...

What shell are you using?

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pi@OrangePi:~ $ bash
pi@OrangePi:~ $ time sleep 3

real    0m3.007s
user    0m0.007s
sys     0m0.000s

pi@OrangePi:~ $ sh
$ time sleep 3
sh: 1: time: not found

[scruss]

There's also GNU time:

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sudo apt install time

which puts the time binary in /usr/bin

[Bosse_B]

What shell are you using?

How can i find out?
I am just issuing the command I want to time in a PuTTY session window into the RPi.
Such command can be gzip of a RPi image file:

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time gzip newbackup.img

where the newbackup.img file is 10 GB or so in size (takes more than 30 min on the RPi3)
or inside an svn checkout of FreePascal

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time make all

I have not before run into the problem of a missing time function, so I am baffled.
I had to move on so I performed the command without time....

[GlowInTheDark]

Perform the following steps and then post the output:

$ echo $SHELL $BASH $BASH_VERSION
$ type -a time
$ time sleep 5
$

[Bosse_B]

Never mind, found it...

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$ echo $0
-bash

I don't have access to the RPi that acted up at the moment, all others have behaved as expected...

[jbudd]

If you are running Bash, I would expect time gzip newbackup.img to work from the dollar prompt.

Possible explanations that come to mind:
Your gzip command is in an executable file with #!/bin/sh on the first line.
It's in a file you execute by typing sh scriptfile
You have a script or alias called time that tries to execute a non existent command.

[Bosse_B]

It might have been a one-time fluke....
Right now wherever I check it works as it should.
And I am talking about a command typed in on the terminal prompt..