How do I use AppleScript to time program execution

Question

I would like to use AppleScript to batch run a bunch of programs and get the time that each one ran.

Example: From the command line I would type

time ls

like this:

$ time ls

Applications 

bin

net

Library

... etc



real    0m0.013s

user    0m0.002s

sys     0m0.006s

but when I try to use apple script and put the results into a variable, it completely ignores the time output.

Example:

set result to do shell script "time ls"

returns

Applications 

bin

net

Library

... etc

with no mention of the time execution time anywhere.

Even making this more simple:

set result to do shell script "time"

returns

""

How do I get the time of execution back from AppleScript?

p.s. I'm not actually trying to time

ls

. I want to time a bunch of custom created programs, but

ls

makes simple example.

Answer 1

Use the exec 2>&1 command to redirect the STDERR to STDOUT, like this:

do shell script "exec 2>&1; time  ls"

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