From owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Tue Aug 25 18:50:16 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 0E263106568D for ; Tue, 25 Aug 2009 18:50:16 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from dougb@FreeBSD.org) Received: from mail2.fluidhosting.com (mx21.fluidhosting.com [204.14.89.4]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 95D878FC14 for ; Tue, 25 Aug 2009 18:50:15 +0000 (UTC) Received: (qmail 11328 invoked by uid 399); 25 Aug 2009 18:50:11 -0000 Received: from localhost (HELO foreign.dougb.net) (dougb@dougbarton.us@127.0.0.1) by localhost with ESMTPAM; 25 Aug 2009 18:50:11 -0000 X-Originating-IP: 127.0.0.1 X-Sender: dougb@dougbarton.us Message-ID: <4A94325D.6070201@FreeBSD.org> Date: Tue, 25 Aug 2009 11:50:05 -0700 From: Doug Barton Organization: http://www.FreeBSD.org/ User-Agent: Thunderbird 2.0.0.23 (X11/20090822) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Brian Somers References: <20090825034054.2d57e733@dev.lan.Awfulhak.org> In-Reply-To: <20090825034054.2d57e733@dev.lan.Awfulhak.org> X-Enigmail-Version: 0.96.0 OpenPGP: id=D5B2F0FB Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Cc: freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.org, Ivan Radovanovic 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 18:50:16 -0000 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. Short version, yes, I object to changing the defaults. Longer version, I don't see anything wrong with the defaults the way that they are, and the fact that there is a teeny-tiny learning curve for people who need to see the full output isn't really an issue that deserves the time already spent on it. Bruce pointed out in the PR that most users would be surprised if 'ps -ax | grep foo' suddenly sprouted a lot more stuff that 'ps -ax' didn't have, and I agree. As a matter of personal preference I find the current defaults to be just lovely, and occasionally use -w or -ww if I need to see more. If you want the default to be something different, that's what aliases are for. Doug -- This .signature sanitized for your protection