Hi Guys,

Do you know how I can return the value of the Free Swap memory to a variable in shell? I know that the free -k command gives you the info, but it gives me too much. It does not only give the Swap. All I need is the actual value which I can store in a variable and use later in my code. Any ideas?

This is the output of free -k:
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 3997796 3297512 700284 0 147936 2711580
-/+ buffers/cache: 437996 3559800
Swap: 2031608 47624 1983984

I need the last line, last value (1983984)

Thanks,
J

Have a look at this:

1 members found this post helpful.

Holy crap dude, that was a quick response. Thanks a lot...

I get the first part, that's just the command.
I get the second part as well. That is the scanning of the text part.
What I don't get it the last print part. Can you explain what is happening here?

Thanks,
J

You're welcome

First the free -k | awk '/^Swap/ { print $4 }' part is executed.

The output of free -k is given to awk. awk looks for a line that starts with Swap (the /^Swap/ part). When awk finds such a line it prints field number 4 (the free swap space).

The output of free -k | awk '/^Swap/ { print $4 }' is used to set the variable.

awk splits the input line, print $4 will print the fourth part

Clever stuff, thanks again. You helped me a lot.