[plug] Using the "cut" command on fields seperated with variable number of spaces

[Nima Talebi]

If the problem you have is specific to ps, and not how to sort/grep/mangle
table-formatted output, why not use the options that come with ps ?

eg

ps -eo pid

Nima

----- Original Message -----
From: "David Buddrige" <buddrige at wasp.net.au>
To: <plug at plug.linux.org.au>
Sent: Thursday, January 30, 2003 8:59 AM
Subject: [plug] Using the "cut" command on fields seperated with variable
number of spaces


> Hi all,
>
> If I run the command:
>
> ps -aux
>
> I get the following output.
>
> USER       PID %CPU %MEM   VSZ  RSS TTY      STAT START   TIME COMMAND
> root         1  0.0  0.0  1368   76 ?        S     2002   0:04 init [5]
> root         2  0.0  0.0     0    0 ?        SW    2002   0:00 [keventd]
> root         3  0.0  0.0     0    0 ?        SW    2002   0:00
[kapm-idled]
> root         4  0.0  0.0     0    0 ?        SW    2002   5:01 [kswapd]
> root         5  0.0  0.0     0    0 ?        SW    2002   0:00 [kreclaimd]
> root         6  0.0  0.0     0    0 ?        SW    2002   3:05 [bdflush]
> root         7  0.0  0.0     0    0 ?        SW    2002   0:21 [kupdated]
> root         8  0.0  0.0     0    0 ?        SW<   2002   0:00
[mdrecoveryd]
> root        73  0.0  0.0     0    0 ?        SW    2002   0:00 [khubd]
> root       509  0.0  0.0  1428  332 ?        S     2002   0:01 syslogd -m
0
> root       514  0.0  0.0  1864  112 ?        S     2002   0:00 klogd -2
> rpcuser    543  0.0  0.0  1608    4 ?        S     2002   0:00 rpc.statd
> root       617  0.0  0.0     0    0 ?        SW    2002   0:05 [rpciod]
> root       618  0.0  0.0     0    0 ?        SW    2002   0:00 [lockd]
> root       633  0.0  0.0  1352    4 ?        S     2002   0:00
> /usr/sbin/apmd -p
> root       652  0.0  0.0 18012  280 ?        S     2002   0:00 ypbind
>
>
> In the past, when I have tried to extract a single field from a list, I
> have used the cut command to specify the appropriate field, however in
this
> instance, there is no delimeter between the fields, other than a variable
> number of spaces.  Does anyone know how to extract (for example) the PID
> field from this kind of output?
>
> thanks guys
>
> David.
>