Process-Monitor

A minimal top-style process viewer for Windows, written against the Win32 API directly — no dependencies beyond the Windows SDK.

Enumerates every running process via a ToolHelp32 snapshot and renders a live, sortable table in the console. Columns resize themselves to the widest value present, so output stays aligned regardless of process-name length.

PROCESS NAME        ID      > THREADS <↑   PARENT ID   PRIORITY
explorer.exe        4821    142             1204        8
chrome.exe          9130    58              4821        8
...

Controls

Key	Action
← / →	Move the sort column
↑ / ↓	Toggle ascending / descending
Q	Quit

The active sort column is marked inline in the header (> THREADS <↑).

How it works

File	Role
getprocs.cpp	CreateToolhelp32Snapshot + Process32FirstW/Process32NextW walk, collected into vector<ProcInfo>
sortprocs.cpp	Single comparator lambda switching on a KeyList enum, so one function covers all six columns in both directions
keyactions.cpp	Key handling as an unordered_map<WORD, ActionFn> dispatch table rather than a switch — registered once in InitKeyActions
displayprocs.cpp	Redraw loop, dynamic column widths, header decoration

Process names are held as std::wstring throughout (PROCESSENTRY32W), so processes with non-ASCII names display correctly instead of being mangled through the ANSI variants.

Build

g++ -std=c++20 src/main.cpp src/source/*.cpp -o src/main.exe

Or use the bundled VS Code task (Ctrl+Shift+B). Windows-only — depends on windows.h, tlhelp32.h, and the console API.