How could I get Process list with paths to executable?

[Julius]

Hello community,

I have to find a way to get list of PID's and paths to the executables they represent. On Windows I did it using CreateToolhelp32Snapshot procedure but it is for windows only. Are there any alternatives for Mac OS X ?

What I try to achieve is a list of Pid|Executable like 1234|/bin/someprogram

Of course I could parse the output of ps -A command, but is there another way? If there is no other way may someone share ones code of parsing ps ?

Thank you in advance!

[ludob]

A while ago on the mailing list there was discussion regarding this subject on Linux which could be of interest: http://lists.lazarus.freepascal.org/pipermail/lazarus/2011-August/066036.html. The conclusion there was that parsing ps was probably the best way.

When parsing ps, make it as easy as possibly by carefully selecting the output format. Fe.

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ps -o pid,comm
to show only pid and executable. The format is fixed and easy to parse with the copy function.

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ps -o pid,command
will show pid and executable+parameters.
All keywords usable with ps -o are listed at the end of the man page for ps.

EDIT:

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ps -o pid=,comm=will get rid of the header also.