PATCH for a more-POSIX `ps', and related adventures

[Garance A Drosihn]

At 4:59 PM +0100 3/22/04, Jilles Tjoelker wrote:
>On Sat, Mar 20, 2004, Garance A Drosihn wrote:
>
>>      Adds a `-R ruserlist' option, which is the same as what
>>           SYSv3 describes for `-u' (we already have a `-u').
>>           Amazingly, none of solaris, linux, or irix seem to
>>           have any kind of `-R' option.
>
>SUSv3 says -u selects by effective uid and -U selects by real uid.
>FreeBSD -U selects by effective uid and -u is something else totally.
>This is only of the (few) obstacles to SUSv3 (not XSI) compatibility
>(another being the default selection). XSI level compatibility would
>require a lot of POLA violation.

Ugh.  I kept thinking I was reading that one backwards, but somehow
I managed to keep convincing myself that I had it right.  Well, I am
not comfortable suggesting that we change -U's definition this far
into the life of 5.x.  That could be pretty confusing (even though
it is a subtle change).

Great.  So what should I do here?  Add a `-E' option for "effective
userid"?  In fact, add both `-E' and `-R', and then we would have
two options that we could MFC into 4.x as well as 5.x (without any
conflict).  At some later date (in 6.x?), we would have the option
of changing '-U' to match the standard definition.  Amazingly, both
`-E' and `-R' seem to be unused on the other OS's I have here.

I am not thrilled with that idea, but at the moment I can't think
of a better one.  I *would* like to support matches of both real
and effective users.  I guess we could add some other option
which would say "use the POSIX definitions of -u and -U", but that
doesn't exactly thrill me either.

Anyone have any other suggestions?
Should I just leave it alone for now?

-- 
Garance Alistair Drosehn            =   gad at gilead.netel.rpi.edu
Senior Systems Programmer           or  gad at freebsd.org
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute    or  drosih at rpi.edu