Command-line Number of thread per process on MacOS

Question

I'd like to be able to get the number of thread per process in command-line and get the exact same number I can see via the Activity Monitor.

At the moment the IntelliJ IDEA process (PID 5235) has 266 Thread. I'd like to get this number but via a command line.

I've tried

lsof -p 5235 | wc -l

Any suggestions?

lsof lists open files so it would not provide you with the threads — joseph, Sep 30, 2021 at 1:01

jweyrich · Accepted Answer · 2017-06-30 12:41:27Z

13

Try the following:

NUM=`ps M <pid> | wc -l` && echo $((NUM-1))

We subtract 1 from the line count because ps outputs a HEADER in the 1st line.

answered May 15, 2014 at 8:23

jweyrich

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(1) The output from wc -l is a single “word”; i.e., a (single ) non-null sequence of non-blank characters, possibly preceded and/or followed by whitespace. What do you gain by piping it into xargs? (I.e., won’t your command do the same thing if you leave off the | xargs?) Are you doing it just to strip the leading and/or trailing whitespace? Why bother? expr will take care of that for you.   … (Cont’d)
– Scott - Слава Україні
Jun 30, 2017 at 6:49
(Cont’d) … (2) Why are you subtracting one? To exclude the header line from the count? Good answers explain things like that. (3) I suppose using expr is OK, but it might be better to say NUM=$((NUM-1)) or ((NUM--)). Or you could just suppress the header by saying ps M -opid= <pid>.
– Scott - Слава Україні
Jun 30, 2017 at 6:50
@Scott: you're absolutely right. I did update the answer to include the your improvements. Thank you! The only thing I didn't include was the -opid= because it doesn't seem to work on macOS. If you still feel it could be better, feel free to update it or just leave another comment.
– jweyrich
Jun 30, 2017 at 12:48

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Greenonline · Accepted Answer · 2017-06-29 12:58:57Z

3

This also works:

ps M <pid> | wc -l

Greenonline

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answered Jun 29, 2017 at 12:32

giraysam

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As discussed in the comments under jweyrich’s answer, this will be too high by one, because it will count the ps header line. Or do you have a rationale for believing that your answer is correct?
– Scott - Слава Україні
Jun 30, 2017 at 16:20

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ghost28147 · Accepted Answer · 2022-04-19 19:09:16Z

2

One can also engage tail command in order to cut off header line in the ps M output, e.g:

ps M <pid> | tail -n+2 | wc -l

where -n+2 option means "get all lines starting from the second one"

answered Apr 19, 2022 at 19:09

ghost28147

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3 Answers 3