Question: Reading the Output of Top

[Jason White]

Parham Doustdar <parham90 at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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.


top -b -n1|less
will at least give you output that can more easily be reviewed, and which
won't change while you're reading it.

This doesn't meet all of your requirements, but it may help to some extent.

You can obviously change the parameter to the -n option to modify the number
of samples taken.