Simple stopclock using BASH

Today I had to use a stop clock to time something in a program that I was writing. I found a way to use a BASH variable to make my simple watchdog

#!/bin/bash

clear

# While some condition is true (I always tend to use data command)

while date > /dev/null

do

# Seconds is a bash variable which will give the number of seconds since

# the shell invocation. If a value is assigned to SECONDS, the value

# returned upon subsequent references is the number of seconds since

# the assignment plus the value assigned. "man bash" for more details

SECONDS=0

# Something to pause the execution

read pause_var

echo " $SECONDS Secs"

done

I press enter to know the lap time.

BASH has so many such surprises in it, I wonder how much more still needs to be discovered.