I like your style, but it's not quite right: $ echo /proc/[0-9]/status | wc 1 7 105 $ echo /proc/[1-9]*/status | wc 1 483

I like your style, but it's not quite right: $ echo /proc/[0-9]/status | wc 1 7 105 $ echo /proc/[1-9]*/status | wc 1 483 8778 It also will sporadically print error messages due to all the race conditions. Here's my stab at it: $ cat dumbps #!/bin/sh case $# in 1) ;; *) echo "Usage: dumbps user" >&2 exit 2 ;; esac 2>&- find /proc -mindepth 2 -maxdepth 2 -type f -name status -user "$1" | awk '{ while ((getline li < $0) > 0) { if (li ~ /^Name:/) { split($0, fn, "/") print fn[3], substr(li, 6) break } } close($0) }' $ ./dumbps "$USER" | grep -w 'bash$' 1616678 bash $ ./dumbps 0 | grep -w 'systemd$' 1 systemd $ It's pretty fast too: $ ls -ld /proc/[1-9]*/status | awk '$3 == "root"' | wc 445 4005 29367 $ time ./dumbps >/dev/null Usage: dumdps user real 0m0.001s user 0m0.000s sys 0m0.001s $