time

This function returns number of non-leap seconds since 1.1.1970, UTC. Useful for feeding the value to other functions or to determine time differences.

#!/usr/bin/perl
#

$timeStart = time(); 

sleep 3; # replace this by the piece of code you are interested in 

$timeTotal = time() - $timeStart; 

print " Total time $timeTotal \n"; 
exit 0;

The time() output may also be fed into localtime.

($sec, $min, $hour, $mday, 
 $mon, $year, $wday, $yday, $isday) = localtime time();