Powershell script: Powershell equivalent of Linux top

One thing I like about Linux is the top command. The linux top command displays in a continious stream cpu movements. This real-time display is very useful when you're trying to identify any unusual patterns in cpu, or trying to identify the highest user.

I started thinking about you would have a similar structure using powershell. Getting the cpu information is straightforward.

 
Get-Process or ps will display the information with the headers:

Handles  NPM(K)    PM(K)      WS(K) VM(M)   CPU(s)     Id ProcessName

Thats's easy. But to view any movements I need to continiously hit the refresh button. There are better things to do , particuarly if you can program the refresh sequence.

In Powershell you can set off a command and it will refresh without you needing to continiously click in the button. Replicating the same behaviour as Linux top is just a few extra keystrokes, and the effect is similar

Here is an example of Powershell scripting , that will display the top 10 processes based on CPU and refresh every 3 seconds. You can adjust the refresh rate and sort as it suits your requirements

while (1) {Get-Process | sort -desc cpu | select -first 10; 
sleep -seconds 3; cls; 
write-host "Handles  NPM(K)    PM(K)      WS(K) VM(M)   CPU(s)     Id ProcessName"; 
write-host "-------  ------    -----      ----- -----   ------     -- -----------"}

A problem outlined to me by Rick Willemain in the blog post comments was the truncation of left digits in the CPU(s) column.

This is occurring due to sizing issues.  If you're experiencing this problem use this version of the code , which basically adds a pipe into the Format Table   functionality.

while (1) {Get-Process | sort -desc cpu | select -first 10 | format-table -autosize; 
sleep -seconds 3; cls; 
write-host "Handles  NPM(K)    PM(K)      WS(K) VM(M)   CPU(s)     Id ProcessName"; 
write-host "-------  ------    -----      ----- -----   ------     -- -----------"}

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