Watch

watch¶

Step-in replacement for watch(1) on systems that lack it. Repeatedly clears the screen and runs the given command, displaying a header line with the command and current timestamp (unless -t is set).

Piped or compound commands must be quoted as a single string: watch 'ps aux | head'

Example¶

watch df -h
watch -n 5 uptime
watch -t 'ps aux | head'

Options¶

• -h

Print usage and return

• -n

seconds Seconds between updates (default: 2)

• -t

Suppress the header line

• -v

Print version information and return

Arguments¶

• ... (string): Command to run

Exit codes¶

• 0: Loop terminated (e.g. by Ctrl-C); or -h/-v flag
• 1: Invalid option or no command given