Deprecating ps(1)s -w switch

[Frank Mayhar]

On Tue, 2009-08-25 at 08:48 -0700, Tim Kientzle wrote:
> Jonathan McKeown wrote:
> > On Tuesday 25 August 2009 15:44:47 Ed Schouten wrote:
> >> * Brian Somers <brian at FreeBSD.org> wrote:
> >>> I recently closed bin/137647 and had second thoughts after Ivan (the
> >>> originator) challenged my reason for closing it.
> >>>
> >>> The suggestion is that ps's -w switch is a strange artifact that can
> >>> be safely deprecated.  ps goes to great lengths to implement width
> >>> limitations, and any time I've seen people not using -ww has either
> >>> been a mistake or doesn't matter. 
> 
> The difference between "ps", "ps -w", and "ps -ww" is pretty
> significant for Java, in particular.  Java command lines
> are typically enormous (thank you, CLASSPATH) which makes
> "ps -ww" often more annoying than it's worth.
> 
> I concur with another poster that the GNU ps approach for
> supporting multiple argument styles deserves consideration.

I realized that nobody asked me, but IMHO it ain't broke so don't fix
it.  I use -w and -ww a lot, and yes, I do distinguish them.  Sometimes
-w is enough; if it isn't, then I'll use -ww but otherwise I avoid it
because it gives just too much output in many cases.
-- 
Frank Mayhar frank at exit.com  http://www.exit.com/
                                http://www.exit.com/blog/frank/
                                http://www.zazzle.com/fmayhar*