Format for reading /proc/self/status and /proc/meminfo

ldmarks · 11-09-2018, 03:39 PM

I want to be able to read the information in /proc/self/status (primarily memory information) and the total available memory from /proc/meminfo. This needs to be done "on the fly" in code which will be used on different systems. Are there include files which specify the format used? While I can (on one system) do a simple search for MemFree for instance, I would prefer not to have to search for MEMFREE, Memfree etc since I am not sure if the format is standardized across all OS.

syg00 · 11-09-2018, 05:45 PM

It will certainly not be consistent across all OS - in fact /proc is different on various *nix let alone others.
But for Linux distros you can assume they will be consistent - /proc is a pseudo filesystem provided by the kernel. "files" may be added to over time, and meminfo certainly has, but pre-existent entries are not going to change retro-spectively.

Personally I always parse those sort of thing case-insenitively.