If I want to check cpu usage and related info quitly, I go for vmstat, which will give you, amongst other info, the % idle, system and user time, or vmstat 1 which will do the same, but polls every second.

The output of vmstat should not be difficult to parse, though I don't know if it's available everywhere (or gives output in the same format).

One thing to watch out for, though, is that AFAIK it can produce "counter intuitive" results (like a maximum of 50% in fairly common cases) when you have intel hyper-threading cpu's.

HTH,
Joost.

"What should it profit a man, if he should win a flame war, yet lose his cool?"

In reply to Re: Finding out Processor Usage by Joost
in thread Finding out Processor Usage by stvn

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