我想提出另一种避免召回日期命令的方法。如果你已经收集了%T日期格式的时间戳，这可能会有帮助:

ts_get_sec()
{
  read -r h m s <<< $(echo $1 | tr ':' ' ' )
  echo $(((h*60*60)+(m*60)+s))
}

start_ts=10:33:56
stop_ts=10:36:10

START=$(ts_get_sec $start_ts)
STOP=$(ts_get_sec $stop_ts)
DIFF=$((STOP-START))

echo "$((DIFF/60))m $((DIFF%60))s"

我们甚至可以用同样的方法处理毫秒。

ts_get_msec()
{
  read -r h m s ms <<< $(echo $1 | tr '.:' ' ' )
  echo $(((h*60*60*1000)+(m*60*1000)+(s*1000)+ms))
}

start_ts=10:33:56.104
stop_ts=10:36:10.102

START=$(ts_get_msec $start_ts)
STOP=$(ts_get_msec $stop_ts)
DIFF=$((STOP-START))

min=$((DIFF/(60*1000)))
sec=$(((DIFF%(60*1000))/1000))
ms=$(((DIFF%(60*1000))%1000))

echo "${min}:${sec}.$ms"

以下是我的做法:

START=$(date +%s);
sleep 1; # Your stuff
END=$(date +%s);
echo $((END-START)) | awk '{print int($1/60)":"int($1%60)}'

非常简单，取开始时的秒数，然后取结束时的秒数，打印出以分钟为单位的差值:秒。

这是我的bash实现(bit从其他SO;-)

function countTimeDiff() {
    timeA=$1 # 09:59:35
    timeB=$2 # 17:32:55

    # feeding variables by using read and splitting with IFS
    IFS=: read ah am as <<< "$timeA"
    IFS=: read bh bm bs <<< "$timeB"

    # Convert hours to minutes.
    # The 10# is there to avoid errors with leading zeros
    # by telling bash that we use base 10
    secondsA=$((10#$ah*60*60 + 10#$am*60 + 10#$as))
    secondsB=$((10#$bh*60*60 + 10#$bm*60 + 10#$bs))
    DIFF_SEC=$((secondsB - secondsA))
    echo "The difference is $DIFF_SEC seconds.";

    SEC=$(($DIFF_SEC%60))
    MIN=$((($DIFF_SEC-$SEC)%3600/60))
    HRS=$((($DIFF_SEC-$MIN*60)/3600))
    TIME_DIFF="$HRS:$MIN:$SEC";
    echo $TIME_DIFF;
}

$ countTimeDiff 2:15:55 2:55:16
The difference is 2361 seconds.
0:39:21

未测试，可能有bug。

另一种选择是使用dateutils (http://www.fresse.org/dateutils/#datediff):)中的datediff

$ datediff 10:33:56 10:36:10
134s
$ datediff 10:33:56 10:36:10 -f%H:%M:%S
0:2:14
$ datediff 10:33:56 10:36:10 -f%0H:%0M:%0S
00:02:14

你也可以用gawk。Mawk 1.3.4也有strftime和mktime，但旧版本的Mawk和nawk没有。

$ TZ=UTC0 awk 'BEGIN{print strftime("%T",mktime("1970 1 1 10 36 10")-mktime("1970 1 1 10 33 56"))}'
00:02:14

或者这里有另一种GNU日期的方法:

$ date -ud@$(($(date -ud'1970-01-01 10:36:10' +%s)-$(date -ud'1970-01-01 10:33:56' +%s))) +%T
00:02:14

使用GNU日期(可靠的Ubuntu 14.04 LTS)概括@nisetama的解决方案:

start=`date`
# <processing code>
stop=`date`
duration=`date -ud@$(($(date -ud"$stop" +%s)-$(date -ud"$start" +%s))) +%T`

echo $start
echo $stop
echo $duration

收益率:

Wed Feb 7 12:31:16 CST 2018
Wed Feb 7 12:32:25 CST 2018
00:01:09

或者把它包起来一点

alias timerstart='starttime=$(date +"%s")'
alias timerstop='echo seconds=$(($(date +"%s")-$starttime))'

这样就行了。

timerstart; sleep 2; timerstop
seconds=2