PXTREE(1)

📦 version 3.6.12, in debian trixie, ubuntu resolute, ubuntu stonking

💖 PXTREE(1) 💖

okay so bestie, welcome to section 1 of the General Commands Manual, aka the place where the real ones live. this is pxtree, and it's about to become your new obsession 🫶

✨ NAME ✨

pxtree — display running processes in a tree 🌳

🎀 SYNOPSIS 🎀

pxtree [--debug] [SEARCH]

🌸 DESCRIPTION 🌸

pxtree lists all your running processes, but make it a tree. iconic behaviour, honestly.

Every process name gets its PID right after it, chillin' in parentheses. and if like, multiple processes are literally wearing the same name? they get coalesced into ONE entry, marked with (3×) in bold — where that 3 is the number of duplicates. so if you see (3×), that's three lil guys stacked into one line. slay 💅

The optional SEARCH parameter can be any of these:

  • A PID (Process ID)
  • A process name, or even just part of one
  • A user name

Any search hits get highlighted in bold ✨ and — this is the bestie part — all the parents and children of all search hits will always be listed. no orphans left behind, fr fr 🥹

Now, about --debug: with that flag, extra log messages are sometimes printed after pxtree finishes. not always! sometimes! don't come for me, that's literally what it says 🙈

🦋 PROCESS NAMING 🦋

pxtree tries to be helpful about naming processes, and it actively avoids printing the names of various VMs. because who wants to see java forty times, right? 💀

for example, if you run:

java -jar foo.jar

pxtree will show that process as foo.jar rather than java. so much cleaner, so much more main character energy 👑

🌈 SEE ALSO 🌈

👑 HOMEPAGE 👑

pxtree lives at http://github.com/walles/px — go say hi 🏠💖

and that's a wrap, bestie! this page came to you from Debian, dated October 2, 2023 — so go forth, run pxtree, and vibe check your process tree 🌳✨ periodt.

📦 where this page comes from