Hello, monks

I have a fast question:

I want to match unix`s ps aux, and I have some idea I realized and it is working, I am just wondering if the approach is good, decent or poor noob-a-like.

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;

open(PS, "ps aux|") || die "Can`t open PS filehand: $!\n";
my $strindex; #still a global var... argh!
my %prochash=();
while ( <PS> ) { 
    #obtain the length to match according to ps aux
   {
        print "#Enter the block just once\n";
        last if $strindex;
        $strindex = index($_, "STAT"); 
        #obtain how characters the RegEx should not match
   } #no more of this besides the first line
   if ( /^.{$strindex}(?<stats>.{1,4})\s){1}?/i ) {
       $prochash{$+{stats}}++; #count processes status
      }
}

close(LS); #or don`t if you want to maintain the PSes

while (my($k, $v) = each(%prochash) ) {
      print "$k is $v times \n";
}

[download]

Any better ideas will be most appriciated. But not too advanced stuff since I am still a newbie.

Update

I was able to parse "top" command too assigning it to a dseired by me hash. Here is the codeblock:

#!/usr/bin/perl -w    ##Copyright yours truly Ilian Z.
use strict;
sub handler {
    print "Interupt catch\n";
    die "Dead...\n";
}

=pod
open LS, "ps aux|" or die "Can`t open filehandle: $!\n";
my %phash=();
my $strm; 
while ( <LS> ) {
     
     {
         print "#enter the block";
         if ( $strm ) {
             last;
         }
         $strm = index($_, "STAT");
         
     }
     
     if ( /^.{$strm}(?<status>.{1,4}\s){1}?/i ) {
         $phash{$+{status}}++;
     }
     
     
}

close LS;

while ( my($k, $v) = each(%phash) ) {
    print $k, " ===> ", $v, "\n";
}
=cut

open TOP, "top|" || die "Can`t open 'top' command: $!\n";
my %pnc = ();
my @tmp=();
my ($pid, $command);
while ( my $match = <TOP> ) {

    {
        next if $command > 0 ;
        $command = index($match, "COMMAND");
        $command++;
     # end block after 1st verify
    }
    next if $command < 1 ;    #if we don`t match the index let`s skip 
+below
    
        #Here we make a process ID the key and the command the value
        #a bit ugly but normal for Camel 
         
         ($pnc{($match =~ /(?<pid>\d+)/) ? $+{pid} : 0} =
         ($match =~ /^.{$command}\s(?<cmd>.+)/i)?$+{cmd} : 0 ) || next
+; 
}

close TOP;

while (  my ($k, $v) = each(%pnc) ) {
    if ( defined $k and defined $v ) {
        print "Proc.ID#",$k," runs command: ", $v,"\n";
    }
}
[download]

Hope that some UNIX sys admins will benefit from the idea and the code.

You won`t see anything in the terminal, just press 'Q' sometime to see the hash assignment. It`s a baby code and there can be many options to it. If I get better I`ll definitely modularize it and hope to help some world`s problems.

P.S.

I had no idea that parsing TOP is actually not exactly what you think and what you see in the terminal. After top >> top.log and review it in texteditor I saw many control characters so  /^(\d+)\s/ never worked since no new line began with a digit but a control character!!! Awesomely godness! Never knew that stuff!