NAME

Proc::ProcessTable - Perl extension to access the unix process table

SYNOPSIS

use ProcessTable;

$p = new Proc::ProcessTable( 'cache_ttys' => 1 ); 
@fields = $p->fields;
$ref = $p->table;

DESCRIPTION

Perl interface to the unix process table.

METHODS

new

Creates a new ProcessTable object. The constructor can take one flag:

cache_ttys -- causes the constructor to look for and use a file that caches a mapping of tty names to device numbers, and to create the file if it doesn't exist (this file is /tmp/TTYDEVS by default). This feature requires the Storable module.

fields

Returns a list of the field names supported by the module on the current architecture.

table

Reads the process table and returns a reference to an array of Proc::ProcessTable::Process objects. Attributes of a process object are returned by accessors named for the attribute; for example, to get the uid of a process just do:

$process->uid

The priority and pgrp methods also allow values to be set, since these are supported directly by internal perl functions.

EXAMPLES

# A cheap and sleazy version of ps
use Proc::ProcessTable;

$FORMAT = "%-6s %-10s %-8s %-24s %s\n";
$t = new Proc::ProcessTable;
printf($FORMAT, "PID", "TTY", "STAT", "START", "COMMAND"); 
foreach $p ( @{$t->table} ){
  printf($FORMAT, 
         $p->pid, 
         $p->ttydev, 
         $p->state, 
         scalar(localtime($p->start)), 
         $p->cmndline);
}


# Dump all the information in the current process table
use Proc::ProcessTable;

$t = new Proc::ProcessTable;

foreach $p (@{$t->table}) {
 print "--------------------------------\n";
 foreach $f ($t->fields){
   print $f, ":  ", $p->{$f}, "\n";
 }
}              

CAVEATS

Please see the file README in the distribution for a list of supported operating systems. Please see the file PORTING for information on how to help make this work on your OS.

AUTHOR

D. Urist, durist@world.std.com

SEE ALSO

Proc::ProcessTable::Process.pm, perl(1).