Measuring CGI resource usage

[Richard Gaskin]

CGI is an uncommonly harsh environment, with the entire runtime life 
cycle happening in the time it takes to satisfy an HTTP request. So I 
tend to take great care in measuring both CPU time and memory with CGI 
scripts, but I've found it difficult to get accurate measurements in the 
server environment.

One commonly-recommended method is to use the "time" program, with the 
--verbose option to include memory:

     /usr/bin/time --verbose ./livecode-server somescriptfile.lc

It seems on many systems that time program is implemented in an 
incomplete way, showing artificially low values for memory usage.

top might seem a good option, but in practice it's useless since even 
its tightest update frequency is less than the execution time of my scripts.

Any suggestions for something like /usr/bin/time but is actually 
reliable, something I can attach to the command line call for an 
accurate measurement of both time and memory?

-- 
  Richard Gaskin
  Fourth World Systems
  Software Design and Development for the Desktop, Mobile, and the Web
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