>But, the thing is... it shouldn't be a syntax error, right? I agree, this thread is really about 2 issues. The interpreter barf with "time;" and the fact that "time <no args>" is broken - I suspect the two issues are not related.
> According to my tests, it also fails like OP reported in posix mode: The OP reported the syntax error, I reported that time noargs always returns zero, IE it is broken. > Or... why not have time behave the same in non-posix mode?... > backwards compatibility is not an issue, since it's not useful right > now. And the posix mode behavior is kind of useful. I disagree, time with no arguments is a confusing idea. Time as a command is quite intuitive, but time with arguments is not - most people would have to refer to the documentation to confirm what it actually measures. As it it appears to measure nothing at all, and I believe a slightly broken concept, then my personal preference would be to remove the "time <noargs>" behaviour completely. All but the most marginal real world cases can be tested like this: # time /bin/bash -c 'somescript or command' Even the loading setup time of bash itself can be tested like this: # time /bin/bash -c 'exit' It is better to have any real world script using time with no arguments exit with an error in the future rather than report that everything is a super computer as it does currently.
