Many versions of ps truncate lines at a certain length if they can't determine the terminal size. Use the "w" option to stop the truncating : -w Wide output. Use this option twice for unlimited width. w Wide output. Use this option twice for unlimited width. HTH's Crouse On 2/12/08, Anders Johansson wrote:

Here's a phenomenon I haven't seen before

I happened to see in the output from "ps aux" these processes

ajh 31091 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? Zs Feb10 0:00 [mpl] <defunct> ajh 31476 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? Zs Feb10 0:00 [mpl] <defunct> ajh 31882 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? Zs Feb10 0:00 [mpl] <defunct> ajh 32288 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? Zs Feb10 0:00 [mpl] <defunct> ajh 32474 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? Zs Feb10 0:00 [mpl] <defunct> ajh 32517 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? Zs Feb10 0:00 [mpl] <defunct> ajh 32627 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? Zs Feb10 0:00 [mpl] <defunct>

I didn't know what "mpl" was, and spent some time searching for it. Then, for whatever reason, I wanted to refresh the ps list, so I did "ps aux|grep mpl", and I got this

ajh 31091 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? Zs Feb10 0:00 [mplayer] <defunct> ajh 31476 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? Zs Feb10 0:00 [mplayer] <defunct> ajh 31882 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? Zs Feb10 0:00 [mplayer] <defunct> ajh 32288 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? Zs Feb10 0:00 [mplayer] <defunct> ajh 32474 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? Zs Feb10 0:00 [mplayer] <defunct> ajh 32517 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? Zs Feb10 0:00 [mplayer] <defunct> ajh 32627 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? Zs Feb10 0:00 [mplayer] <defunct>

So ps truncates individual fields in the output now based on the size of the output medium, instead of just cutting off the line?

That's something I have't seen before

Anders

-- Madness takes its toll -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

-- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

On Tuesday 12 February 2008 11:11, Anders Johansson wrote:

On Tuesday 12 February 2008 20:04:18 Dave Crouse wrote:

...

Many versions of ps truncate lines at a certain length if they can't determine the terminal size.

I know that, I even said so. That's not what's happening here.

Now it's started truncating individual fields (in this case the name of the program), instead of truncating the whole line

This is not something it has done before

It seems it's just trying to be clever. The examples you gave were of applications that were swapped out, so ps doesn't have access to the real command line and instead prints only the program's base name as recorded in the process table. This is signified by enclosing that name in square brackets. The cleverness, such as it is, then, is not discarding the trailing square bracket and truncating the string inside the square brackets. And as ever, when run through a pipe, a default width must be used, since the output is not going (directly) to a terminal.

Anders

-- Madness takes its toll

Randall Schulz -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org