[SOLVED] Is there any builtin option to show title and searched option?

Madhu Desai · 07-16-2013, 08:07 AM

Hi

I’m wondering is there any builtin command or trick to display grep-ed result along with title. Many a times, when using grep on different commands, which have long listing, it becomes difficult to figure-out what each column mean without looking at title header, especially when the command is not frequently used, and you kinda get lost looking at the results.

Although I use sed to achieve that, just curious what others usually do to achieve same result.

For example:

Code:

$ ps aux | grep vsftpd
root      2788  0.0  0.0  52104   744 ?        Ss   10:50   0:00 /usr/sbin/vsftpd /etc/vsftpd/vsftpd.conf
madhu     9000  0.0  0.0 103248   916 pts/0    S+   18:27   0:00 grep --color=auto vsftpd

I use sed (in this example for ps)

Code:

$ ps aux | sed -ne '1p; /vsftpd/p'
USER       PID %CPU %MEM    VSZ   RSS TTY      STAT START   TIME COMMAND
root      2788  0.0  0.0  52104   744 ?        Ss   10:50   0:00 /usr/sbin/vsftpd /etc/vsftpd/vsftpd.conf
madhu     9014  0.0  0.0 105252   840 pts/0    S+   18:29   0:00 sed -ne 1p; /vsftpd/p

Thanks

druuna · 07-16-2013, 08:35 AM

Most people use ps in its simpler form (ps -ef / ps aux) and use (e)grep to get the details they want.

ps has however a ton of options that can be used to influence what is shown and how this info is shown.

This, for example, is the ps ... | sed .... shown above by only using ps:

Code:

ps -C vsftpd -o user,pid,%cpu,%mem,vsize,rss,tty,stat,start_time,time,cmd

The -c name specifies the process that you want to see and the -o ...... line determines what you want to see about this process.

Have a look at the man page (STANDARD FORMAT SPECIFIERS) to get a list of what it is you can specify to see.

shm0 · 07-16-2013, 08:37 AM

Just do this:

Code:

echo "USER       PID %CPU %MEM    VSZ   RSS TTY      STAT START   TIME COMMAND" ; ps aux | grep <procname>

druuna · 07-16-2013, 09:09 AM

Just in case: If the ps stuff isn't your thing, this is the best I can come up with using a pipe:

Code:

ps aux | egrep "^USER|[v]sftpd"

shivaa · 07-16-2013, 09:25 AM

Interesting question! Well, for those who are used to the ps output, don't need it's header since they're aware about the various fields.

In the meantime, if you're printing all fields of ps output, then I would go with what suggested in post #3. Otherwise if you're printing only certain fields, then I will go with druuna's solution suggested in post #2, since in that case you will be knowing that what fields you're going to print. Also both solutions can be combined to get desired results. You can also give try to:

Code:

~$ ps aux | awk 'NR<2' ; ps aux | grep vsftpd

Madhu Desai · 07-17-2013, 07:21 AM

Thanks all, especially druuna for showing '-C' and '-o' options.

Cheers!!!

druuna · 07-17-2013, 07:29 AM

You're welcome