Question: Reading the Output of Top

[John G. Heim]

Okay, I threw together a script to linearize table output from programs 
like top. It's at:
http://www.math.wisc.edu/~jheim/pub/linearize

You can get it with wget:

$ wget http://www.math.wisc.edu/~jheim/pub/linearize

To run it, type linearize and your command after it. For example, to use 
it with top, do this:

linearize top -bn1

The keys you have to use are configured at the top of the script. I had 
to choose keys that would not interfere with speakup or orca so I picked 
i to move up a line, the comma to move down a line, j to move left a 
cell, and l to move right a cell. They form a little cross on the 
keyboard. But you can easily change them to whatever you like by editing 
the script. Let me know if you think there is a more logical set of keys 
that don't interfere with other functions.

One tricky thing. There is a key defined to set the column headings. 
Press the h key and the script will use the current line for column 
headings. Behaviour of the left and right keys is undefined until you do 
this. So if you are using the script with top, you'd want to use the 
comma to move down several times until you hear the first line of the 
table listing processes. Then press the h key. From then on you can move 
around as if you are in a table.


On 05/07/2016 06:24 AM, Parham Doustdar wrote:
>
> Hi John,
>
>     I doubt that there is an answer to your first question. You could
>     probably write a script to do it.
>
> Top is unusable without such a feature, but you and other people 
> replying to this thread seem to be using it just fine. So, what tricks 
> do people use in order to memorize what column is for what value? I 
> have this problem when reading the output of commands like |free -m|, too.
>
> Thanks!
>
> On 5/6/2016 6:00 PM, John G Heim wrote:
>
>> I doubt that there is an answer to your first question. You could 
>> probably write a script to do it.
>>
>> As for your second question, I run top thusly, 'top -bn1 | more'. 
>> This runs top in batch mode and has it retrieve the data just once. 
>> Piping the output to more keeps the data from scrolling off the top. 
>> What you get is a snapshot of the data at the moment you run the top 
>> command.
>>
>> PS: You can also set the refresh rate for top to something high 
>> enough for you to listen to the output.
>>
>>
>>
>> On 05/06/2016 01:59 AM, Parham Doustdar wrote:
>>> Hi all,
>>>
>>> What do you do when you want to read content of a command like 
>>> |top|? There are two issues with it:
>>>
>>> 1. There is no way of knowing the title of a column without first
>>>    navigating to the headers. I want to be able to go to the
>>>    next/previous column, know the title of a column, etc.
>>> 2. The output keeps changing. For example, while I’m reading one line,
>>>    its CPU usage might drop and cause it to be reordered in the list.
>>>
>>> How do you get through these issues?
>>>
>>> Thanks!
>>>
>>> ​
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>>
> ​