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

[Albert Cahalan]

On Mon, 2004-03-29 at 04:04, Harti Brandt wrote:
> On Mon, 29 Mar 2004, Stephen McKay wrote:
> 
> SM>On Monday, 29th March 2004, Harti Brandt wrote:
> SM>
> SM>>Think of 'ls -o'. -o is taken by posix to mean the same as '-l' but
> SM>>without showing the group. FreeBSD ls instead takes it to show file flags.
> SM>>This is a more obvious case where you want the selection.

That was driving me nuts on a FreeBSD box just a few
days ago. :-)

> SM>I had promised to leave this debate, having said what I thought needed to
> SM>be said.  But this (and your subsequent message) implies that there are
> SM>people who want to add $PERSONALITY to many basic FreeBSD utilities, not
> SM>just in ps.
> SM>
> SM>This is a very bad road to take.  Far from solving portability difficulties,
> SM>it guarantees those difficulties into the indefinite future.

Pyrimid OS was a different problem. It was fully expected that
half of the users would choose BSD and the other half would
choose SysV, and that they would set this in ~/.profile even.
The users were even encourages to do this, right?

Being able to flip a script into an odd mode isn't quite the same.

> SM>If we need posix compatibility (and this should be a separate debate), then
> SM>we take the pain and change the 'ls -o' option.  For one release cycle the
> SM>option still works in the old manner but outputs a warning.  In the next
> SM>major release, it changes to the posix flavour.  Bang.  Problem solved.

Go for it. Make "ps" print a warning if "-" is ever used.
Change "ls -o" too of course.

> SM>Adding a hidden variable just makes things more complicated and guarantees
> SM>the pain continues forever.  People *will* set this variable inappropriately,
> SM>and it *will* be a source of problems.
>
> I'm all with you on this. I said all this under the proposition that we
> want to keep BSD syntax that conflicts with Posix. Sure, I'd rather simply
> move to posix. (The only thing I'd want to retain is 'ps ax' :-)

As long as you don't expect "ps -ax" as well, no problem.

> SM>PS Should the CC list be truncated now?
> 
> Ok. After this one :-)

I'd like to be left on.