下面是Daniel Kamil Kozar的回答，表示小时/分钟/秒:

echo "Duration: $(($DIFF / 3600 )) hours $((($DIFF % 3600) / 60)) minutes $(($DIFF % 60)) seconds"

所以完整的脚本是:

date1=$(date +"%s")
date2=$(date +"%s")
DIFF=$(($date2-$date1))
echo "Duration: $(($DIFF / 3600 )) hours $((($DIFF % 3600) / 60)) minutes $(($DIFF % 60)) seconds"

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

截至目前(GNU coreutils) 7.4，你现在可以使用-d来做算术:

$ date -d -30days
Sat Jun 28 13:36:35 UTC 2014

$ date -d tomorrow
Tue Jul 29 13:40:55 UTC 2014

你可以使用的单位是天、年、月、小时、分钟和秒:

$ date -d tomorrow+2days-10minutes
Thu Jul 31 13:33:02 UTC 2014

GNU单位:

$ units
2411 units, 71 prefixes, 33 nonlinear units
You have: (10hr+36min+10s)-(10hr+33min+56s)
You want: s
    * 134
    / 0.0074626866
You have: (10hr+36min+10s)-(10hr+33min+56s)
You want: min
    * 2.2333333
    / 0.44776119

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