Date: Thu, 27 Aug 2009 12:28:30 +0200 From: =?utf-8?Q?Dag-Erling_Sm=C3=B8rgrav?= <des@des.no> To: Brian Somers <brian@FreeBSD.org> Cc: freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.org, Ivan Radovanovic <rivanr@gmail.com> Subject: Re: Deprecating ps(1)s -w switch Message-ID: <86fxbd1rg1.fsf@ds4.des.no> In-Reply-To: <20090826234009.13b90734@dev.lan.Awfulhak.org> (Brian Somers's message of "Wed, 26 Aug 2009 23:40:09 -0700") References: <20090825034054.2d57e733@dev.lan.Awfulhak.org> <20090826234009.13b90734@dev.lan.Awfulhak.org>
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Brian Somers <brian@FreeBSD.org> writes: > To clarify, my proposal is to silently ignore the -w switch (any/all of t= hem) > and to remove the code that reads the terminal width and truncates some > columns based on the result (or based on "132"). > > The pros: > > - ps's code becomes simpler. It was mentioned that the ps code is > a minefield. This would remove a few mines. Frankly, the width limiting code is the least of ps's problems. > - ps IMHO has no business knowing about terminal widths (and where > did the 132 column -w idea come from again?). Some programs such > as iostat have similar (but way more broken) behaviour however whilst > others such as ls do not. Actually, ls does pretty much the same thing (use a different layout when run on a tty), and it's far from the only Unix utility to do so. Usually, the tty layout is "pretty" while the non-tty layout is easier to work with in scripts. > The cons: > [...] > - Scripts may exist that depend on the behaviour without -w. Furthermore > having to handle ps from both before and after such a change in one > script can be painful. Breaking existing scripts would be an *extremely* unwise and unpopular move. The only part of your proposal I support is removing the 132-column limit on 'ps -w' (which I believe would make the output from 'ps -w' identical to that from 'ps -ww') DES --=20 Dag-Erling Sm=C3=B8rgrav - des@des.no
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