NAME

       Proc::ProcessTable - Perl extension to access the unix process table

SYNOPSIS

         use Proc::ProcessTable;

         my $p = Proc::ProcessTable->new( 'cache_ttys' => 1 );
         my @fields = $p->fields;
         my $ref = $p->table;

DESCRIPTION

       Perl interface to the unix process table.

METHODS

       new Creates a new ProcessTable object. The constructor can take the following flags:

           enable_ttys -- causes the constructor to use the tty determination code, which is the
           default behavior.  Setting this to 0 disables this code, thus preventing the module
           from traversing the device tree, which on some systems, can be quite large and/or
           contain invalid device paths (for example, Solaris does not clean up invalid device
           entries when disks are swapped).  If this is specified with cache_ttys, a warning is
           generated and the cache_ttys is overridden to be false.

           cache_ttys -- causes the constructor to look for and use a file that caches a mapping
           of tty names to device numbers, and to create the file if it doesn't exist. This
           feature requires the Storable module.  By default, the cache file name consists of a
           prefix /tmp/TTYDEVS_ and a byte order tag. The file name can be accessed (and changed)
           via $Proc::ProcessTable::TTYDEVSFILE.

       fields
           Returns a list of the field names supported by the module on the current architecture.

       table
           Reads the process table and returns a reference to an array of
           Proc::ProcessTable::Process objects. Attributes of a process object are returned by
           accessors named for the attribute; for example, to get the uid of a process just do:

           $process->uid

           The priority and pgrp methods also allow values to be set, since these are supported
           directly by internal perl functions.

EXAMPLES

        # A cheap and sleazy version of ps
        use Proc::ProcessTable;

        my $FORMAT = "%-6s %-10s %-8s %-24s %s\n";
        my $t = Proc::ProcessTable->new;
        printf($FORMAT, "PID", "TTY", "STAT", "START", "COMMAND");
        foreach my $p ( @{$t->table} ){
          printf($FORMAT,
                 $p->pid,
                 $p->ttydev,
                 $p->state,
                 scalar(localtime($p->start)),
                 $p->cmndline);
        }

        # Dump all the information in the current process table
        use Proc::ProcessTable;

        my $t = Proc::ProcessTable->new;

        foreach my $p (@{$t->table}) {
         print "--------------------------------\n";
         foreach my $f ($t->fields){
           print $f, ":  ", $p->{$f}, "\n";
         }
        }

CAVEATS

       Please see the file README in the distribution for a list of supported operating systems.
       Please see the file PORTING for information on how to help make this work on your OS.

AUTHOR

       D. Urist, durist@frii.com

SEE ALSO

       Proc::ProcessTable::Process, perl(1).