Reduce docker ps Output Clutter with AWK

I’m a fan of docker, especially with my brand new macbook - spinning up loads of containers is always fun 😀. However when listing the containers, things get a bit unclear. Check the following output:

CONTAINER ID   IMAGE                                                  COMMAND                  CREATED       STATUS             
    PORTS                                                                                  NAMES
d52c11b67cfe   docker.elastic.co/elasticsearch/elasticsearch:7.13.2   "/bin/tini -- /usr/l…"   2 hours ago   Up 2 hours         
  0.0.0.0:9200->9200/tcp, :::9200->9200/tcp, 0.0.0.0:9300->9300/tcp, :::9300->9300/tcp   vb-bo_elasticsearch_1
76fee05889f0   logstash:7.13.2                                        "/usr/local/bin/dock…"   2 hours ago   Up 50 minutes       
  0.0.0.0:5044->5044/tcp, :::5044->5044/tcp, 0.0.0.0:9600->9600/tcp, :::9600->9600/tcp   vb-bo_logstash_1
e18d279ed438   mysql/mysql-server:latest                              "/entrypoint.sh mysq…"   2 hours ago   Up 2 hours (healthy)
  0.0.0.0:3306->3306/tcp, :::3306->3306/tcp, 33060-33061/tcp                             vb-bo_mysql_1

See what I mean? Columnnames floating to the next line, a lot of white space making it not so readable.

Recently I got more invested with AWK, and wanted to give this a try and I came up with this little gem.

{print $2, $5} 
END{
 print "\n",NR-1, "up and running"
}

This actually means: print the second and fifth column (Mind you: this is not zero-index based). Also you need a special delimiter, so tying everthing together you get:

docker ps | awk -F '(   )+' '{print $2, $5} END{print "\n",NR-1, "up and running"}'

Now you get this cleaner output with the final line being the summary of the number of running containers

IMAGE  STATUS
docker.elastic.co/elasticsearch/elasticsearch:7.13.2 Up 2 hours
logstash:7.13.2 Up 58 minutes
mysql/mysql-server:latest Up 2 hours (healthy)

 3 up and running

Of course, if you don’t want to dip your toe in AWK, docker ps now also supports the --format switch.

docker ps --format "table {{.Names}} {{.Status}}"