Retrieve RAM info on a Mac?

Question

I need to retrieve the total amount of RAM present in a system and the total RAM currently being used, so I can calculate a percentage. This is similar to: Retrieve system infor

Answer 1

You can figure out the answer to this question by looking at the source of the top command. You can download the source from http://opensource.apple.com/. The 10.7.2 source is available as an archive here or in browsable form here. I recommend downloading the archive and opening top.xcodeproj so you can use Xcode to find definitions (command-clicking in Xcode is very useful).

The top command displays physical memory (RAM) numbers after the label "PhysMem". Searching the project for that string, we find it in the function update_physmem in globalstats.c. It computes the used and free memory numbers from the vm_stat member of struct libtop_tsamp_t.

You can command-click on "vm_stat" to find its declaration as a membor of libtop_tsamp_t in libtop.h. It is declared as type vm_statistics_data_t. Command-clicking that jumps to its definition in /usr/include/mach/vm_statistics.h.

Searching the project for "vm_stat", we find that it is filled in by function libtop_tsamp_update_vm_stats in libtop.c:

mach_msg_type_number_t count = sizeof(tsamp->vm_stat) / sizeof(natural_t);
kr = host_statistics(libtop_port, HOST_VM_INFO, (host_info_t)&tsamp->vm_stat, &count);
if (kr != KERN_SUCCESS) {
    return kr;
}

You will need to figure out how libtop_port is set if you want to call host_statistics. I'm sure you can figure that out for yourself.