From owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Tue Aug 25 14:09:12 2009 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 18D3F106568C for ; Tue, 25 Aug 2009 14:09:12 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from j.mckeown@ru.ac.za) Received: from f.mail.ru.ac.za (f.mail.ru.ac.za [IPv6:2001:4200:1010::25:6]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 4B53E8FC24 for ; Tue, 25 Aug 2009 14:09:11 +0000 (UTC) DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; q=dns; c=nofws; s=ru-msa; d=ru.ac.za; h=Received:From:Organization:To:Subject:Date:User-Agent:References:In-Reply-To:X-Face:MIME-Version:Content-Type:Content-Transfer-Encoding:Content-Disposition:Message-Id:X-Virus-Scanned:X-Authenticated-User; b=DrSzfdq61JOGofqVLOjMO/RuSa+xnyjfPsyalGMRQS52+yXlD8sAZEoRhJdVJ1cEJc0HHf+rRvihNQmEiw8pul+Xxp+PfkUQhxNKumFBBAmrHs+sbkSYo0Z2yKLXkGjb; Received: from vorkosigan.ru.ac.za ([2001:4200:1010:1058:219:d1ff:fe9f:a932]:53851) by f.mail.ru.ac.za with esmtpsa (TLSv1:AES256-SHA:256) (Exim 4.69 (FreeBSD)) (envelope-from ) id 1Mfwhx-000DgS-FJ for freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org; Tue, 25 Aug 2009 16:09:09 +0200 From: Jonathan McKeown Organization: Rhodes University To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Date: Tue, 25 Aug 2009 16:09:09 +0200 User-Agent: KMail/1.9.10 References: <20090825034054.2d57e733@dev.lan.Awfulhak.org> <20090825134447.GM2829@hoeg.nl> In-Reply-To: <20090825134447.GM2829@hoeg.nl> X-Face: $@VrUx^RHy/}yu]jKf/<4T%/d|F+$j-Ol2"2J$q+%OK1]&/G_S9(=?utf-8?q?HkaQ*=60!=3FYOK=3FY!=27M=60C=0A=09aP=5C9nVPF8Q=7DCilHH8l=3B=7E!4?= =?utf-8?q?2HK6=273lg4J=7Daz?=@1Dqqh:J]M^"YPn*2IWrZON$1+G?oX3@ =?utf-8?q?k=230=0A=0954XDRg=3DYn=5FF-etwot4U=24b?=dTS{i X-Virus-Scanned: f.mail.ru.ac.za (2001:4200:1010::25:6) X-Authenticated-User: s0900137 from vorkosigan.ru.ac.za (2001:4200:1010:1058:219:d1ff:fe9f:a932) using auth_plaintext Subject: Re: Deprecating ps(1)s -w switch X-BeenThere: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Technical Discussions relating to FreeBSD List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Tue, 25 Aug 2009 14:09:12 -0000 On Tuesday 25 August 2009 15:44:47 Ed Schouten wrote: > * Brian Somers wrote: > > I recently closed bin/137647 and had second thoughts after Ivan (the > > originator) challenged my reason for closing it. > > > > The suggestion is that ps's -w switch is a strange artifact that can > > be safely deprecated. ps goes to great lengths to implement width > > limitations, and any time I've seen people not using -ww has either > > been a mistake or doesn't matter. Using 'cut -c1-N' is also a great > > way of limiting widths if people really want that... > > > > I'd like to propose changing ps so that width limits are removed and > > '-w' is deprecated - ignored for now with a note in the man page > > saying that it will be removed in a future release. > > > > Does anyone have any objections to doing this? I don't propose > > merging this back into stable/8. > > So ps(1) output can never be limited to the screen width? I usually want to see ps(1) output in easily-read columns. Without width limits, this can't be guaranteed. I would strongly object to the complete removal of any option to limit the output width of ps(1) and make it easily human-readable. I'm also astonished at the suggestion that not using -ww is ``a mistake''. I very seldom need to see the whole commandline for every process. Jonathan