pidstat: why no binary output option?

[reikred]

I would like to send pidstat output to a file and then make a graph from it using sadf. But there appears to be no option of pidstat to generate the binary output format that sadf wants. Such a feature would be highly useful, I think.

[sysstat]

sadf is a command intended to display sar data in various formats (including SVG format, i.e. graphic output). pidstat is a different command which is not related to sar. I don't plan to add a binary output to it. This is too much work and I don't have enough time for that...

[ghost]

feeble first try with gnuplot

S_TIME_FORMAT=ISO pidstat -hurvw -p 8180 1 30 | grep -v -e "^Linux" -e "^\s*$" > mydata.txt 

head mydata.txt
# Time        UID       PID    %usr %system  %guest   %wait    %CPU   CPU  minflt/s  majflt/s     VSZ     RSS   %MEM   cswch/s nvcswch/s threads   fd-nr  Command
14:38:55      100      8180    1.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    1.00    22      1.00      3.00 5332304 1277572   1.94      0.00      0.00     233      -1  java
# Time        UID       PID    %usr %system  %guest   %wait    %CPU   CPU  minflt/s  majflt/s     VSZ     RSS   %MEM   cswch/s nvcswch/s threads   fd-nr  Command
14:38:56      100      8180    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    22      0.00      1.00 5332304 1277572   1.94      0.00      0.00     233      -1  java

cat gnuplot_commands.txt | grep -v -e "^\s*$" -e "^\s*#"                                                       
set xdata time                           # Indicate that x-axis values are time values
set timefmt "%H:%M:%S"                   # Indicate the pattern the time values will be in
set format x "%H:%M:%S"                     # Set how the dates will be displayed on the plot
set autoscale
set key left top                         # Set lengend location to top-left 
set xtics rotate by -45                  # Rotate dates on x-axis 45deg for cleaner display
set title 'pidstat, take 1' font ",18" # Set graph title, set title font size to 18
set terminal svg size 1200,630
set output 'output.svg' 
plot 'mydata.txt' using 1:4 with linespoints linetype 6 linewidth 3 title '%usr', \
     'mydata.txt' using 1:5 with linespoints linetype 7 linewidth 3 title '%system', \
     'mydata.txt' using 1:8 with linespoints linetype 2 linewidth 3 title '%CPU'

gnuplot < gnuplot_commands.txt