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in reply to Re: overcoming the 80 character limitation of solaris ps
in thread overcoming the 80 character limitation of solaris ps

Thank you, that was exactly the advise I needed !

Beeing curious, I wonder if you know why /usr/ucb/ps prints the full commandline, but when redirecting its output, the -www switch is needed ?

thanks,
       Kurt
  • Comment on Re: Re: overcoming the 80 character limitation of solaris ps

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Re: Re: Re: overcoming the 80 character limitation of solaris ps
by hossman (Prior) on Jun 27, 2002 at 02:09 UTC
    (first of all, i realize now that -ww is usually all you need -- i can't remember why, but some where i got it in my head that on some systems, you need -www)

    I don't have any documentation to back this up, but as i understand it, this is what happens:

    • If /usr/ucb/ps has no idea where it's output is going (ie: you are redirecting it, or on a dumb terminal) then it follows the strict definition in the manpage: 80 chars, unless you use -w in which case it's 132 chars, unless you use -ww(w) in which case it's as wide as possible.
    • If you are using a non-dumb terminal, and /usr/ucb/ps can determine your terminal width, then it will use that width by default. if you use -w (or -ww or -www) it will output as much as possible

    you probably aren't really seeing -w truncated to 80 characters when you pipe it -- you're probably seeing it truncated to 132, which is all -w is documented to give you.

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