Re: [patch] ps.c ps.1 Disregard terminal width when STDOUT is not a tty (take 2)

[Stuart Henderson <stu@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 2008/07/21 23:06, Hannah Schroeter wrote:
> >>>You do raise a valid point.  My main reason for the patch is that I
> >>>have a couple of scripts that I don't control, that assume the ww on
> >>>STDOUT!=tty, and break if it isn't present - I am assuming because the
> >>>GNU tools (and maybe others) do this.

When GNU ps detects BSD-like options they emulate some BSD behaviour
(columns displayed, processes chosen), but not this. If that isn't
broken, it's at least inconsistent. It's also undocumented.

And that is why the scripts someone has given you aren't portable.

> So ps ... (without any w option) | grep yields terminal width output
> without the discussed patch. With the discussed patch, it'd yield long
> lines and there'd be no option to tell ps to create terminal width lines
> in the first place.

totally agreed.