parsing the output of the 'w' command?
- by Blackbinary
I'm writing a program which requires knowledge of the current load on the system, and the activity of any users (it's a load balancer).
This is a university assignment, and I am required to use the w command. I'm having a hard time parsing this command because it is very verbose. Any suggestions on what I can do would be appreciated. This is a small part of the program, and I am free to use whatever method i like.
The most condensed version of w which still has the information I require is `w -u -s -f' which produces this:
10:13:43 up 9:57, 2 users, load average: 0.00, 0.00, 0.00
USER TTY IDLE WHAT
fsm tty7 22:44m x-session-manager
fsm pts/0 0.00s w -u -s -f
So out of that, I am interested in the first number after load average and the smallest idle time (so i will need to parse them all).
My background process will call w, so the fact that w is the lowest idle time will not matter (all i will see is the tty time).
Do you have any ideas?
Thanks
(I am allowed to use alternative unix commands, like grep, if that helps).
