Track the time a command takes in UNIX/LINUX?

Yes, use time <command>, such as

time ls

Consult man time for more options. Link.

Here is how a sleep of one second looks like, timed with time:

$ time sleep 1

real    0m1.001s
user    0m0.000s
sys 0m0.000s

Use

/usr/bin/time 

instead that the time builtin in the bash: it is more configurable AFAIK.

e.g. /usr/bin/time --format=' \n---- \nelapsed time is %e'ls