How to sort the output of the top command

[Jan vd Vlugt]

When running the top command i will show all the running processes at the top of the list. Is there a way to sort on state and cpu?

[Jonathan Fife]

Probably the best you're going to do using the top command is redirecting it to a file and then sorting that. You'll get the headers and footers in the file too, though.

Why not use ps instead?

ps -elf | sort -nr +5 #sort by cpu
ps -elf | sort -r +1 #sort by state

[spex]

Hi Jan,

'top' will not do this interactively. Use 'ps':

# UNIX95= ps -e -o pcpu= -o state= -o pid= -o args= | sort -r -k2,1 | head -20

PCS