Question on 'top' command

Hello,

I would like to extract only specific fields in a 'top' output. For example, I want to just find the percent time the system is idle, available free memory, etc. Is there a way to do this. It may be possible to grep for the entire line but I just need specific parameters with the lines. Any thoughts on this is appreciated.

Thanks.

you could probably just poll /proc for a lot of that information.

Could do that but I have this specific requirement.

The tool for splitting a line is cut.