Performance Utilization Monitoring? Does OSX have programmatic access

Question

On AIX you have <perfstat> on Win32 the PDH libraries, on unix/linux procfs
Where do I go for physical memory and cpu utilization info on OSX?
I've exhausted google, but as usually I'm probably not typing in the right keywords.
Obviously this is for a low-level C program, any input would be greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

Thank you so much; I took a look at mac fuse and thankfully it was open source....so I started scrolling through the source and found exactly what I needed, below is a simple C program that will pull CPU statistics. It was my test program to make sure I understood what was happening, if you ever have more questions about this please contact.
The key to all of this was investigating the mach subsystem
============================================================================
Name : GetCPUInfo.cpp
Author :
Version :
Copyright : Your copyright notice
Description : Hello World in C, Ansi-style
============================================================================
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <mach/mach.h>
#include <mach/mach_vm.h>
#include <mach/vm_region.h>
#include <mach/vm_statistics.h>
static processorport_arrayt processor_list;
static machportt pdefaultset = 0;
static machportt pdefault_setcontrol = 0;
static hostprivt host_priv;
static natural_t processor_count = 0;
#define EXITON_MACHERROR(msg, retval) \
if (kr != KERN_SUCCESS) { mach_error(msg ":" , kr); exit((retval)); }
int main(void) {
int i, count;
vmsizet pageSize;
vmstatistics_datat vm_stat;
kernreturnt kr;
hostcpu_load_info_datat cpu;
count = HOSTCPU_LOAD_INFOCOUNT;
hoststatistics(mach_hostself(), HOSTCPU_LOADINFO, (hostinfot)&cpu, &count);
printf("Count: %i, Idle: %i \n", count, cpu.cputicks[CPU_STATEIDLE]);
count = sizeof(vm_stat) / sizeof(natural_t);
hoststatistics(mach_hostself(), HOSTVMINFO, (hostinfo_t)&vmstat, &count);
printf("Free Pages: %i, Active Pages: %i, Inactive Pages: %i, Wired Pages: %i, Zero Filled Pages: %i\n",
vmstat.freecount, vmstat.activecount, vmstat.inactivecount, vmstat.wirecount, vmstat.zero_fillcount);
hostpage_size(mach_hostself(), &pageSize);
printf("Page Size: %i", pageSize);
return EXIT_SUCCESS;
Message was edited by: jonny5isalive