Parse the output of `ps aux` into a list of dictionaries representing the parsed process information from each row of the output.

parse_ps_aux.py

#!/usr/bin/python
# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-

import pprint
import subprocess


def get_processes():
    """
    Parse the output of `ps aux` into a list of dictionaries representing the parsed 
    process information from each row of the output. Keys are mapped to column names,
    parsed from the first line of the process' output.

    :rtype: list[dict]
    :returns: List of dictionaries, each representing a parsed row from the command output
    """
    output = subprocess.Popen(['ps', 'aux'], stdout=subprocess.PIPE).stdout.readlines()
    headers = [h for h in ' '.join(output[0].strip().split()).split() if h]
    raw_data = map(lambda s: s.strip().split(None, len(headers) - 1), output[1:])
    return [dict(zip(headers, r)) for r in raw_data]


pprint.pprint(get_processes())

cool, saved me from trying to get psutil to compile on an unsupported old os..

In python3, output need to decode:
output = [i.decode('UTF-8') for i in output]