freebsd man page for getloadavg

GETLOADAVG(3)						   BSD Library Functions Manual 					     GETLOADAVG(3)

NAME
     getloadavg -- get system load averages

LIBRARY
     Standard C Library (libc, -lc)

SYNOPSIS
     #include <stdlib.h>

     int
     getloadavg(double loadavg[], int nelem);

DESCRIPTION
     The getloadavg() function returns the number of processes in the system run queue averaged over various periods of time.  Up to nelem samples
     are retrieved and assigned to successive elements of loadavg[].  The system imposes a maximum of 3 samples, representing averages over the
     last 1, 5, and 15 minutes, respectively.

DIAGNOSTICS
     If the load average was unobtainable, -1 is returned; otherwise, the number of samples actually retrieved is returned.

SEE ALSO
     uptime(1), kvm_getloadavg(3), sysctl(3)

HISTORY
     The getloadavg() function appeared in 4.3BSD-Reno.

BSD
								   June 4, 1993 							       BSD