posix ps (was Re: Adding `pgrep' and `pkill' to /usr/bin)

[Stephen McKay]

On Saturday, 27th March 2004, Garance A Drosihn wrote:

>>$ PERSONALITY=freebsd ps -?
>
>Secondly, I personally am not fond of commands which COMPLETELY
>change their behavior based on environment variables.  Different
>options, different formats, different rules.

Unifying ps on all Unices (including FreeBSD) is an excellent idea, and
I fully support this.

Using an environment variable (no matter what name is used) to switch
between radically different personalities is an appalling idea.  No script
can depend on the output of ps thereafter.

If multiple personalities is a desirable trait (and it's not clear that it
is) then command line switches and aliases are the correct mechanisms to
use.

Stephen.