c:\temp>timecmd dir c:\
  Volume in drive C is Windows
  Volume Serial Number is A0A8-6684

  Directory of c:\

  01/11/2016  12:45    <DIR>          AMD
  ...
  17/11/2016  12:52    <DIR>          Windows
                 9 File(s)         25,337 bytes
                18 Dir(s)  71,423,356,928 bytes free
  command took 0:0:0.08 (0.08s total)

bat from http://stackoverflow.com/a/6209392

I have had a quick look through here [1] and most of the answers involve timing precision of two significant digits. By that metric, PowerShell's 2.4ms clocks in at 0.00 seconds. Which means cmd.exe (at a precision of two significant digits) can't beat it.

[1] http://stackoverflow.com/questions/673523/how-to-measure-exe...

"2.4" or "0.0024" or "24000" all have two significant digits. Leading and trailing zeros don't count as significant digits.

My mistake, you are right [1]. Thanks for the correction.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Significant_figures

and find that command prompt dir is faster because it's doing less, because it's less capable. It's not creating System.IO.FileInfo and DirectoryInfo objects for each thing in the directory.