PS

A Go library which runs the Unix 'ps' command and returns structured information about the process.

This library essentially runs:

bash -c ps -aux | grep [p]rocess_name

And parses the output of the command.

Installation

$ go get github.com/umahmood/ps

Usage

package main

import (
    "fmt"

    "github.com/umahmood/ps"
)

func main() {
    proc, err := ps.Snapshot("firefox")
    if err != nil {
        fmt.Println(err)
        return
    }
    fmt.Println(proc.PID)
    fmt.Println("")
    fmt.Println(proc)
}

Output:

19352

User   : usman
PID    : 19352
CPU    : 0.00
MEM    : 8.10
VSZ    : 8353516
RSS    : 1350828
TTY    : ??
STAT   : S
START  : 22Dec18
TIME   : 334:44.58
COMMAND: /Applications/Firefox.app/Contents/MacOS/firefox

What do the output fields of the ps command mean?

Limitations

The library only matches unique running processes. If there are multiple processes with the same name, then an error is returned. i.e. if we have the following running processes:

- proc_foo --arg=1
- proc_foo --arg=2
- proc_zap

As there are multiple proc_foo processes, calling ps.Snapshot("proc_foo") will throw an error. I may update the library to change this, but currently it fits my needs.

This library has been tested on Linux and MacOS, it may not work on windows.

Documentation

http://godoc.org/github.com/umahmood/ps

License

See the LICENSE file for license rights and limitations (MIT).