How to get time in milliseconds in Android Shell?

Question

I am trying to make a shell script to run on Android. I need to measure time at more precision than seconds - milliseconds or nanoseconds. How can I do it in Android Shell?

The date +%N does not give time in nanoseconds - it just gives N as output. I cannot find any other command/way to do it.

In Android API we can get it easily, so there must be a way to do it through shell too.

as I said, using %N only gives N. so date +%s%N gives 2234232N (the number is some random time in seconds) — Shashank Jain, Jun 07 '13 at 12:09
@shoerat - I want more precision than seconds. milliseconds or micro or nano. your method only gives seconds — Shashank Jain, Jun 07 '13 at 12:11

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Oct 03 '13 at 19:08

0

First install busybox for android:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=stericson.busybox&hl=en

Then you can do:
adb shell "busybox date +%s"

to get the time in seconds and:
adb shell "busybox date +%N"

to get the nano seconds.

answered Oct 03 '13 at 19:08

rhinoinrepose

2,110
2
19
26

1

Root just to get the date? That's silly. If you are installing a native executable to do this, it hardly needs to be root - it's a few lines of C code. – Chris Stratton Oct 03 '13 at 19:28
1

`+%N` doesn't work for me. It only echos text `%N`. – zhangxaochen Dec 14 '15 at 02:23

How to get time in milliseconds in Android Shell?

1 Answers1