Pidof

Pidof is a lightweight command-line utility for retrieving process IDs (PIDs) based on image names or window titles. It provides a simple way to list running processes along with their PIDs and memory usage.

Usage

pidof [<filename>...[--title/-t <title>]] [--help/-h] [--nobanner/-n]

Options

• -h, --help → Display the help menu.
• -n, --nobanner → Suppress the banner.
• -t, --title → Search for processes by window title instead of filename.
• <filename> → Specify the process filename(s) to find the PID.

Example Commands

pidof notepad.exe
pidof --title "Untitled - Notepad"
pidof notepad.exe --nobanner

Download exe for Windows

This tool is part of the 8gudbitsKit project. To download the executable for Windows, visit the 8gudbitsKit repository.

For the Tech People

1. Process Lookup via tasklist

• Uses Windows built-in tasklist command to fetch process details.
• Filters results based on either image name (IMAGENAME eq <filename>) or window title (WINDOWTITLE eq <title>).
• Executes the command using _popen() to capture output dynamically.

2. Parsing & Data Extraction

• The output from tasklist is in CSV format, which is split into lines using a custom split() function.
• Each line is further broken into columns, extracting PID, memory usage, and image name.
• The trimQuotes() function removes unnecessary quotes from CSV fields for clean output.

3. Output Formatting

• Uses std::setw() to align columns properly for readability.
• Displays PID first, followed by memory usage, then image name.
• Ensures a structured table-like format for easy scanning.

4. Command-Line Argument Handling

• Supports multiple filenames and titles via command-line arguments.
• Flags like --title, --nobanner, and --help are processed dynamically.

5. Banner & Help System

• Displays a banner unless suppressed with --nobanner.
• Provides a structured help menu when --help is invoked.

This ensures efficient process lookup while maintaining a clean and readable output format.