Show top five CPU consuming processes with `ps`

Why use ps when you can do it easily with the top command?

If you must use ps, try this:

ps aux | sort -nrk 3,3 | head -n 5

If you want something that's truly 'top'esq with constant updates, use watch

watch "ps aux | sort -nrk 3,3 | head -n 5"

The correct answer is:

ps --sort=-pcpu | head -n 6

So you can specify columns without interfering with sorting.

Ex:

ps -Ao user,uid,comm,pid,pcpu,tty --sort=-pcpu | head -n 6

Note for MAC OS X: In Mac OS X, ps doesn't recognize --sort, but offers -r to sort by current CPU usage. Thus, for Mac OS X you can use:

ps -Ao user,uid,comm,pid,pcpu,tty -r | head -n 6

Depending on your needs you may find this a little more readable:

ps -eo pcpu,pid,user,args --no-headers| sort -t. -nk1,2 -k4,4 -r |head -n 5

sample output:

 1.3     4 root     [ksoftirqd/0]
 1.1     9 root     [ksoftirqd/1]
 1.0 17606 nobody   /usr/sbin/gmetad
 1.0    13 root     [ksoftirqd/2]
 0.3 17401 nobody   /usr/sbin/gmond

(the fields are %CPU,PID,USER,COMMAND)