lp
is a tool to list processes. It's similar to ps
, but tuned for my
everyday needs:
-
lp
tells me some things that I often care about whichps
cannot tell me, such as the number of open file descriptors for a process. -
lp
is not cluttered with things I rarely care about, such as the controlling tty of a process. -
lp
is not encumbered with multiple flag regimes to maintain compatibility with decades of slightly different Unix tools (see:ps -ef
vs.ps aux
). -
More often than not, I use
ps
withgrep
, which has two annoying aspects:- The output elides the header row.
- Unless you take care by writing something like
grep [m]yprocess
, the output will usually include both the process(es) you care about and thegrep
process.
lp
fixes this pragmatically by providing a few flags to filter the process list.
See lp -h
for usage information.
lp
is Linux-only for the time being.