track cpu usage of linux application

[Fabian Braennstroem]

Hi,

    I would like to track the cpu usage of a couple of
    programs using python. Maybe it works somehow with
    piping 'top' to python read the cpu load for a greped
    application and clocking the the first and last
    appearence. Is that a good approach or does anyone have
    a more elegant way to do that?

Greetings!
 Fabian