measuring script speed

[BVBA NuKey Music]

I thought I could measure the execution time of a script like this:
begintime=cputime;myscript;cputime-begintime

this does not work however with scripts which start with a clear
command because the begintime-variable gets erased. Therefore I
thought in stead of deleting the clear statement for the test, I could
proceed as follows:
global begintime=cputime;myscript;cputime-begintime

unfortunately this doesn't work, I also tried this on the linux command line:
time octave<myscript.m

this works but I see the octave-environment being opened which could
falsify the timing results

so what's the best way to achieve this?

thanks in advance
nukey