Re: Listing apps in launch order
Re: Listing apps in launch order
- Subject: Re: Listing apps in launch order
- From: Bryan <email@hidden>
- Date: Mon, 29 Jan 2001 04:28:26 -0500
- Organization: Apex Radiology
if you want a list of apps in launch order:
Just the foreground apps:
Akua Sweets :
"all processes"
Foreground and Background apps:
Late Night Software Suite :
Processes Dictionary OSAX :
"list processes"
Bryan Kaufman
John W Baxter wrote:
>
At 13:33 -0500 1/28/01, Bill Cheeseman wrote:
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>on 1/28/01 11:57 AM, Matthew Fischer at email@hidden wrote:
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>
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>> It's my understanding (feel free to correct me if I'm wrong) that if you
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>>don't
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>> quit applications in the reverse order of the order they were launched that
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>> you don't get back all the memory they have allocated to them. Sometimes
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>>if I
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>> have a bunch of things running, I can't remember what order they were
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>>launched
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>> in.
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>>
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>> How would I go about using Applescript to get a list of my currently running
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>> applications in the order they were launched?
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>
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>It isn't that you don't get all your memory back (except in the case of some
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>ill-behaved apps). The problem is that your memory will become fragmented,
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>with two or more smaller free space areas, instead of one larger area. This
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>should only hurt if you try thereafter to launch an application that needs a
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>larger contiguous free space area than any of those you have left, or if you
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>thereafter launch several smaller apps that do fit but which then leave a
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>few fragments of free space that are too small individually to let any
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>application launch.
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>
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>In a typical user's experience (use very few apps, shut down every night),
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>this problem will rarely if ever crop up.
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>
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>Caveat. The foregoing is based on info I acquired a very long time ago. It's
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>possible that memory management is much smarter now in the classic Mac OS.
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>The problem does not arise at all in Mac OS X.
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>
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>I'm not aware of any simple way you can use AppleScript to resolve this
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>issue. There have been several utilities over the years that show you a
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>graphical representation of your current memory space and usage, but I'm not
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>aware that any of them is scriptable in a useful way. A 1998 utility,
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>ProcessWatcher 3.2, is scriptable, but the dictionary doesn't suggest it
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>will tell you what you want to know (the application itself doesn't, either
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>-- it just lists all running processes), and I got errors trying to use the
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>AppleScript commands it does implement. I normally use Memory Mapper 1.5,
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>another 1998 utility, which has a nice graphical representation of your
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>memory map that shows you what you want to know -- but it isn't scriptable.
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>
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>You could write a stay-open AppleScript application, with an idle handler
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>that fires every few seconds, to run in the background at all times. It
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>could be written to notice when every new process launches and when it
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>quits, keeping a constantly-updated list of the order in which current
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>processes were launched. With some careful arithmetic, you could probably
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>even record the amount of memory each uses and track the number and size of
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>your free space fragments. But it would be a lot of work for a very small
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>payoff.
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If...
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all the apps of interest opened after any you want to keep open; and
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you want to close all the apps of interest; and
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none of the apps you want to keep open allocate lots of temporary memory
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while you're closing apps, and none of them did that while you were opening
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apps, or all of the apps with temporary memory are well-behaved and don't
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lock handles in temporary memory and leave them locked when they aren't
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active, then it shouldn't matter what order you close the apps in...all the
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memory will be freed up and available once the last app of the group is
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closed.
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Temporary memory is where BBEdit keeps the text of the documents you have
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open, IE keeps its stash of pages, MPW writes lots of its temporary
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information, and so on.
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If you DO want to know launch order and/or memory address, it isn't hard in
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C (or whatever) [sorry about the line wrap]:
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>
Sunday, January 28, 2001 at 16:55:26
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Your machine was started on Sunday, January 28, 2001 at 15:00:22
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Name Sig Type Location Size Free Mem
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Launched Ticks used
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Control Strip Extension sdev appe 0x05CFA6C0 0x00038800 0x0001BA70
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15:02:27 1/28/01 53848
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FBC Indexing Scheduler fbcb appe 0x05CC0200 0x0001D000 0x00007A10
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15:02:27 1/28/01 23
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HP Background HPBG appe 0x05C26140 0x00028800 0x00016DF0
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15:02:27 1/28/01 4677
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Time Synchronizer tims appe 0x05C028E0 0x00023000 0x0000AFC0
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15:02:28 1/28/01 91
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Application Switcher apsw appe 0x05C979D0 0x00028400 0x0000F0D0
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15:04:30 1/28/01 1632
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Folder Actions ssrv appe 0x05A79520 0x00070800 0x00054250
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15:04:30 1/28/01 2985
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Finder MACS FNDR 0x05976910 0x00102C00 0x00279E60
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15:04:32 1/28/01 19857
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Eudora CSOm APPL 0x056E8100 0x0028E800 0x000C8D50
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15:07:09 1/28/01 271301
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Script Debugger asDB APPL 0x051E88F0 0x004FF800 0x00395760
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16:44:53 1/28/01 22490
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Process Lister ???? APPL 0x0511B0D0 0x0007D800 0x0005D430
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16:55:25 1/28/01 0
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>
Done.
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>
The Process Manager gives up the information rather easily...the Launched
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column is the time at which the application/FBA/whatever was launched (it
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can easily be returned as an AppleScript date (type 'ldt ')). The location
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is the address of one end or the other of the application...lowest address
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I *think*.
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The program which made that list is a simple C program (for an older
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Codewarrior)...it displays what it learns from Process Manager about each
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process. There are much better such programs around to do the job. A
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scriptable one would be nice, and could exist. (It's the application which
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showed me that Application Switcher leaks memory in every Mac OS version
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from when it appeared through 9.0.4...this leak is fixed in 9.1.)
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>
--John
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>
--
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John Baxter email@hidden Port Ludlow, WA, USA
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