bin/90690: ps(1) errorneously respects terminal column settings when output is not to a terminal

[Oliver Fromme]

The following reply was made to PR bin/90690; it has been noted by GNATS.

From: Oliver Fromme <olli at lurza.secnetix.de>
To: bug-followup at FreeBSD.org, vadim_nuclight at mail.ru
Cc:  
Subject: Re: bin/90690: ps(1) errorneously respects terminal column settings when output is not to a terminal
Date: Wed, 21 Dec 2005 18:00:06 +0100 (CET)

 What you describe is standard BSD ps(1) behaviour, as is
 documented in the manual page.
 
 Basically, the intent is that, when you redirect ps(1) output
 somewhere (to a file or pipe), you get exactly the same that
 is displayed on the screen.
 
 The rules are:  If ps(1) is running in a terminal, it's width
 is used.  If it's not running in a terminal (e.g. via a cron
 job) or the width cannot be determined, the default is 80
 columns.  To determine the terminal width, any one of stdout,
 stderr or stdin is used -- therefore, to let ps(1) ignore the
 terminal width, you have to redirect stderr and stdin.
 
 If you specify the -w option once, the limit is expanded to
 132 columns (unless your terminal width is already larger
 than that).  Finally, if you specify -w twice, the width is
 assumed to be unlimited.
 
 When you use ps(1) in a pipe to grep for things, you should
 always use the -ww options.  Also note that newer versions
 of FreeBSD (> 4.x) have a pgrep(1) command which can be used
 as a convenient replacement for ps | grep pipes.
 
 Best regards
    Oliver
 
 -- 
 Oliver Fromme,  secnetix GmbH & Co. KG, Marktplatz 29, 85567 Grafing
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