Time command execution over multiple executions.
Unix's time
utility is a simple and often effective way of measuring how long a command takes to run. Unfortunately, running a command once can give misleading timings: the process may create a cache on its first execution, running faster subsequently; other processes may cause the command to be starved of CPU or IO time; etc. It is common to see people run time
several times and take whichever values they feel most comfortable with. Inevitably, this causes problems.
multitime
is, in essence, a simple extension to time which runs a command multiple times and prints the timing means (with confidence intervals), standard deviations, minimums, medians, and maximums having done so. This can give a much better understanding of the command's performance.