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Searching for manpage for time command does not yield any result (search form).

As a sidenote, it appears to be a BASH built-in command since dpkg --search bin/time cannot find it. Perhaps such commands don't have their own manpages?

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    Use type time or type -a time to see whether you time command is a shell built-in or a separate executable.
    – michas
    Oct 26, 2013 at 7:02

2 Answers 2

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Correct, usually shell built-ins have help pages instead since their usage isn't usually that involved. If the built-in commands were all that complicated, there would have likely been an effort to simplify shell logic by pushing that functionality into its own executable, at which point it would get a man page.

You can get information on time by using help time

[jadavis6@ditirlns01 ~]$ help time
time: time [-p] PIPELINE
    Execute PIPELINE and print a summary of the real time, user CPU time,
    and system CPU time spent executing PIPELINE when it terminates.
    The return status is the return status of PIPELINE.  The `-p' option
    prints the timing summary in a slightly different format.  This uses
    the value of the TIMEFORMAT variable as the output format.
times: times
    Print the accumulated user and system times for processes run from
    the shell.

Since your example is bash, for GNU tools, you might also try info <toolName> to get more exhaustive information. help is designed to be ran on the command line, and they don't want to flood your screen (possibly pushing useful information off screen) so they try to keep help short and give you the full spiel in the info pages. For example:

[jadavis6@hypervisor ~]$ info time

<...after I hit enter, an ncurses page appears...>

File: time.info,  Node: Top,  Prev: (dir),  Up: (dir)

   This file documents the the GNU `time' command for running programs
and summarizing the system resources they use.  This is edition 1.7,
for version 1.7.

* Menu:

* Resource Measurement::  Measuring program resource use.

 -- The Detailed Node Listing --

Measuring Program Resource Use

* Setting Format::      Selecting the information reported by `time'.
* Format String::       The information `time' can report.
* Redirecting::         Writing the information to a file.
* Examples::            Examples of using `time'.
* Accuracy::            Limitations on the accuracy of `time' output.
* Invoking time::       Summary of the options to the `time' command.

The Format String

* Time Resources::
* Memory Resources::
* I/O Resources::
* Command Info::

Fully describing info pages is probably out of the scope of your question, so I'll leave it at that. I only mention it so you're aware of their existence.

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Correct. Shell built-ins are covered under their shell's man pages, since no appropriate discrete man section exists for them.

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    There is also an external time binary, but may not be installed by default.
    – jordanm
    Oct 26, 2013 at 4:23

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