Brian Somers <[email protected]> writes: > To clarify, my proposal is to silently ignore the -w switch (any/all of them) > 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 -- Dag-Erling Smørgrav - [email protected] _______________________________________________ [email protected] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-hackers To unsubscribe, send any mail to "[email protected]"
