Deprecating ps(1)s -w switch

[Doug Barton]

Brian Somers 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.  Using 'cut -c1-N' is also a great
> way of limiting widths if people really want that...
> 
> I'd like to propose changing ps so that width limits are removed and
> '-w' is deprecated - ignored for now with a note in the man page
> saying that it will be removed in a future release.
> 
> Does anyone have any objections to doing this?  I don't propose
> merging this back into stable/8.

Short version, yes, I object to changing the defaults.

Longer version, I don't see anything wrong with the defaults the way
that they are, and the fact that there is a teeny-tiny learning curve
for people who need to see the full output isn't really an issue that
deserves the time already spent on it. Bruce pointed out in the PR
that most users would be surprised if 'ps -ax | grep foo' suddenly
sprouted a lot more stuff that 'ps -ax' didn't have, and I agree. As a
matter of personal preference I find the current defaults to be just
lovely, and occasionally use -w or -ww if I need to see more. If you
want the default to be something different, that's what aliases are for.


Doug

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