Most PCP tools operate with periodic sampling or reporting, and
the -t (or --interval) and -A (or --align) options may be used to
control the duration of the sample interval and the alignment of
the sample times.
-t interval, --interval=interval
Set the update or reporting interval.
The interval argument is specified as a sequence of one or
more elements of the form
number[units]
where number is an integer or floating point constant
(parsed using strtod(3)) and the optional units is one of:
seconds, second, secs, sec, s, minutes, minute, mins, min,
m, hours, hour, h, days, day and d. If the unit is empty,
second is assumed.
In addition, the upper case (or mixed case) version of any
of the above is also acceptable.
Spaces anywhere in the interval are ignored, so 4 days 6
hours 30 minutes, 4day6hour30min, 4d6h30m and 4d6.5h are
all equivalent.
Multiple specifications are additive, for example ``1hour
15mins 30secs'' is interpreted as 3600+900+30 seconds.
-A align, --align=align
By default samples are not necessarily aligned on any
natural unit of time. The -A or --align option may be
used to force the initial sample to be aligned on the
boundary of a natural time unit. For example -A 1sec, -A
30min and --align 1hour specify alignment on whole
seconds, half and whole hours respectively.
The align argument follows the syntax for an interval
argument described above for the -t or --interval option.
Note that alignment occurs by advancing the time as
required, and that -A (or --align) acts as a modifier to
advance both the start of the time window (see the next
section) and the origin time (if the -O or --origin option
is specified).
