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What command shows the memory usage of a program, i am looking for a command that is simple to use and has similar syntax to the time command. I am trying to find the memory usage of a md5 hashing program that is written in C and takes 7 seconds to hash "hello world" .

I am using the android operating system with busybox installed.

kyle k
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2 Answers2

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Ironically, time might have an answer for you but this time it should be not shell-built-in time but standalone one instead:

$ /usr/bin/time -v uname
Linux
        Command being timed: "uname"
        User time (seconds): 0.00
        System time (seconds): 0.00
        Percent of CPU this job got: 2%
        Elapsed (wall clock) time (h:mm:ss or m:ss): 0:00.12
        Average shared text size (kbytes): 0
        Average unshared data size (kbytes): 0
        Average stack size (kbytes): 0
        Average total size (kbytes): 0
        Maximum resident set size (kbytes): 896
        Average resident set size (kbytes): 0
        Major (requiring I/O) page faults: 1
        Minor (reclaiming a frame) page faults: 304
        Voluntary context switches: 3
        Involuntary context switches: 3
        Swaps: 0
        File system inputs: 56
        File system outputs: 0
        Socket messages sent: 0
        Socket messages received: 0
        Signals delivered: 0
        Page size (bytes): 4096
        Exit status: 0

It counts MAX RSS though, not VSS, so would it be useful for you or not depends on your very task heavily.

UPD.: Mac OS X' "think" is slightly different but still it's time: 

/usr/bin/time -l /Applications/Opera.app/Contents/MacOS/Opera
      244.63 real        54.34 user        26.44 sys
 284827648  maximum resident set size
         0  average shared memory size
         0  average unshared data size
         0  average unshared stack size
    711407  page reclaims
      1272  page faults
         0  swaps
       155  block input operations
       251  block output operations
     98542  messages sent
     68330  messages received
        16  signals received
       699  voluntary context switches
    468999  involuntary context switches
poige
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  • +1, good to know this. But beware, this is a GNU-specific feature. Does Android include GNU `time(1)`? – Warren Young Sep 13 '13 at 06:07
  • Shell builtin? Neither the `bash` nor `zsh` manpages here mention this. Are you confusing it with `times`? – Warren Young Sep 13 '13 at 06:07
  • @WarrenYoung, `for SH in zsh bash dash; do $SH -c 'echo $0; type time'; done` — zsh time is a reserved word — bash time is a shell keyword — dash time is /usr/bin/time – poige Sep 14 '13 at 03:28
  • @WarrenYoung, and nope, Android doesn't have it by default, *but* since `/usr/bin/time` is built heavily on top of system calls `wait3` or `wait4` (I don't remember exactly), it can be easily put into action there as well. – poige Sep 14 '13 at 03:53
  • By the way macOS time shows maximum memory usage in bytes and Linux in kilobytes. – user31389 May 21 '19 at 15:23
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You can use valgrind for this:

$ valgrind myprogram arg1 arg2

Its output will have a lot of irrelevant stuff, but its heap summary does what you want:

==91383== HEAP SUMMARY:
==91383==     in use at exit: 157,643 bytes in 364 blocks
==91383==   total heap usage: 2,999 allocs, 2,635 frees, 306,450 bytes allocated
Warren Young
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