ps -e -o pcpu,pid,cmd --sort pcpu | sed '/^ 0.0 /d'|awk '{print $2}'|grep -v PID

Quote:

Originally Posted by proactiveaditya I want to operate on each pid in the output. How to do so.

That depends on what you want to do.

If you can do it with awk:

Code:

ps -e -o pcpu,pid,cmd --sort pcpu |
 awk '
 /^ 0.0/ || /PID/ { next }
 {
    ## do whatever with $2
}'

Quote:

Originally Posted by proactiveaditya Code: ps -e -o pcpu,pid,cmd --sort pcpu | sed '/^ 0.0 /d'|awk '{print $2}'|grep -v PID Gives the output: Code: 4482 4023 5912 I want to operate on each pid in the output. How to do so.

for PID in $(ps -e -o pcpu,pid,cmd --sort pcpu | sed '/^ 0.0 /d'|awk '{print $2}'|grep -v PID)
do
    echo "the PID is $PID" # or whatever you want to do with that PID
done