fastlist

Like tasklist, but 10x faster.

    Name  Process Time  System   Context    Page  Total I/O
                         Calls  Switches  Faults
fastlist   0:00:00.014    7331      1879    1774     176124
tasklist   0:00:00.165  124549     51150    9017    4001389

For each process, fastlist prints (1) the process ID, (2) the parent process ID, and (3) the executable file, each separated by a \t, followed by a \n. For example:

> fastlist.exe
0       0       [System Process]
4       0       System
72      4       Secure System
128     4       Registry
520     4       smss.exe
776     640     csrss.exe
864     640     wininit.exe
...

fastlist is faster than tasklist, presumably, because it does not print the session name, session number, nor the memory usage of each process. Unlike tasklist, it does, however, print the parent process ID.

Releases

• v0.3.0 (June 15, 2020): Include runtime library; Revert packing binaries
• v0.2.1 (May 23, 2020): Packed binaries
• v0.2.0 (May 23, 2020): Unicode support; x86 and x64 build
• v0.1.0 (Oct 5, 2018): Initial release

Notes

• fastlist was originally built for use in sindresorhus/ps-list (see sindresorhus/ps-list#20).
• It is inspired by performance issues with existing solutions (for example, sindresorhus/fkill#25).
• Being included in npmjs.com/ps-list, fastlist is downloaded more than 1,000,000 times per week.
• Reddit rumors to the contrary notwithstanding, it is not a virus.
• Its author helps to maintain the Node wrapper for tasklist: sindresorhus/tasklist.

Development

• Download and install Microsoft Visual Studio, including its workload for Desktop Development with C++. In VS, create a new Console App. Copy fastlist.cpp into the project and build it.
• To benchmark fastlist, run bench.cmd.
• To test fastlist, run test.cmd.

License

MIT