sadn1ck / psst

trying to implement ps in C - called psst because i obviously cannot call it ps - psst sounds funny

psst - Implementing the ps command in C

Why?

• general interest in operating systems class, and C is fun when it does not SIGSEGV

How?

• all processes are under the /proc virtual filesystem, from the manpage (man proc)

  The proc filesystem is a pseudo-filesystem which provides an interface to kernel data structures. It is commonly mounted at /proc. Typically, it is mounted automatically by the system

• to get running processes we check the subdirectories with /proc/[pid]

  Each one of these subdirectories contains files and subdirectories exposing information about the process with the corresponding process ID

• using these known paths, and opendir to open the /proc path and read its contents, we can get the list of running processes

• for each individual process, the details are stored in /proc/[pid]/stat, in a specified format

• we read the contents of the file with a file pointer, load it into a struct with only the properties we need(use?) and display it

Screenshot

If you have any reviews about this possibly nasty code, please open an issue. I'm a self proclaimed noob at C.