Limit the output of the TOP command to a specific process name

macos unix command-line top-command
Alex picture Alex · Sep 16, 2010 · Viewed 105k times · Source

If you call the top command, you get all the running processes. But how can I limit the output only to a certain process name like "java"?

I've tried this top -l 2 | grep java but in this way you get only snapshots and not a continuously updated list. And top -l 0 | grep java is not really clear.

Answer

Rick Byers picture Rick Byers · Dec 16, 2011

I prefer the following so I can still use top interactively without having to look up the pids each time I run it:

top -p `pgrep process-name | tr "\\n" "," | sed 's/,$//'`

Of course if the processes change you'll have to re-run the command.

Explanation:

  • pgrep process-name returns a list of process ids which are separated by newlines
  • tr "\\n" "," translates these newlines into commas, because top wants a comma-separated list of process ids
  • sed is a stream editor, and sed 's/,$//' is used here to remove the trailing comma

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