macos - Get list of open files (descriptors) in OS X

Question

I would like to get a list of open files in a process on os x (10.9.1). In Linux I was able to get this from /proc/PID/fd. However I'm not sure how to get the same on OS X. I found that the procfs is not present on the OS X (by default. possible implementations present, but I do not want to go that way).

So how do I get (natively) the list of open files in a process on OS X. One way is lsof. is there any other support available? please let me know where I can get more info on this.

Thanks.

Answer 1

I had a hard time getting Activity Monitor to show open files for a process that was running as root (via sudo). The original question mentions lsof, and it does the trick exactly. If you know the process name or PID, it's super quick.

Find processes by name:

lsof -c processname

Find processes by PID:

lsof -p 123

(Prefix with sudo as needed, such as if you are not the owner of the process.)