Date: Sun, 23 May 2004 22:58:23 -0400 From: Garance A Drosihn <drosih@rpi.edu> To: arch@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Change to "kludge option processing" in /bin/ps Message-ID: <p0602040cbcd70df2894b@[128.113.24.47]>
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After staring at the kludge-option processing in `ps' for awhile, I
found enough edge-cases where it simply did not work "right" (for my
definition of "right", at keast...), so I rewrote it. As part of that,
I also removed the ancient "BACKWARD_COMPATIBILITY" compile-time
option, where:
ps -options arg1 arg2
(with no '-' on "arg1" and "arg2") was treated as:
ps -options -N arg1 -M arg2
I did this because I have often been puzzled/annoyed when I type:
ps 12
to get process 12, and then realize I wanted it shown in a
different format so I type:
ps -u 12
and I get a completely different list of processes, or I type:
ps 12 34
and I only see process 12, or I type
ps 12 34 56
and get the error message:
ps: 56: No such file or directory
This BACKWARD_COMPATIBILITY is not documented in the usage()
or the man page, so I'd like to replace it.
So, I changed `ps' to check for any additional arguments after
processing all '-'-options, and if those start with a digit then
`ps' will try to use the entire argument as a pid or pidlist.
If an extra argument does not start with a digit, then `ps' just
prints an error and exits.
I want to do more testing on this before committing, but I thought
that all this was enough of a change that I should also give people
a chance to scream before I commit it. Also, I'm not sure if I
might have clobbered some subtle aspect of the kludge processing.
If anyone wants to try the update, it is available at:
http://people.freebsd.org/~gad/ps-kludge.diff
[disclaimer: at the moment it's only had about 15 minutes of
testing, but I *think* this is about the way I want it to work]
Assuming there aren't any major objections to these ideas, I plan
to do some more testing on this and commit it next weekend.
--
Garance Alistair Drosehn = gad@gilead.netel.rpi.edu
Senior Systems Programmer or gad@freebsd.org
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute or drosih@rpi.edu
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