[mastensg]

Try the time command (not the shell builtin):

    $ command time -f 'max resident:\t%M KiB' ls /
    bin   etc	  initrd.img.old  lib32       media  proc  sbin  tmp  vmlinuz
    boot  home	  iso		  lib64       mnt    root  srv	 usr  vmlinuz.old
    dev   initrd.img  lib		  lost+found  opt    run   sys	 var
    max resident:	968 KiB

[logicchains]

Thanks, I've included max resident memory statistics on the benchmark.