escape characters in watch command

.:neogeo:. · 10-20-2009, 08:16 PM

Hi all,

Need a little help running this command.

watch -d 'ps aux | awk '{print $4"\t"$11}' | sort | uniq -c | awk '{print $2" "$1" "$3}' | sort -nr | head'

I get this error message from AWK. awk: cmd. line:1: {print awk: cmd. line:1: ^ unexpected newline or end of string

I have tried all the usual by trying to escape the single and double quotes in the command but same result. The end result should be the a listing of memory hungry processes that are scanned every 2 seconds ( watch default value )

Any suggestions are welcomed.

Geo.

neonsignal · 10-20-2009, 11:59 PM

Code:

watch -d 'ps aux | awk '\''{print $4"\t"$11}'\'' | sort | uniq -c | awk '\''{print $2" "$1" "$3}'\'' | sort -nr | head'

The trick is to exit the quoting, followed by the escaped quote, then reenter the quoting. Looks messy, but it works. A nicer way would be to put the command inside a script...

.:neogeo:. · 10-21-2009, 02:23 AM

Thanks neonsignal! it worked like a charm. It has been a while since i done anything useful on bash and forgot about those little tricks.

Geo.