ps output line length change

[Ian Lepore]

On Fri, 2018-02-16 at 18:03 -0800, Cy Schubert wrote:
> In message <201802170046.w1H0kvxN032252 at mail.karels.net>, Mike Karels 
> writes:
> > 
> > [...]
> Agreed. I also agree scripts that expect wide output without ww are 
> broken. However Linux ps, at least Red Hat, behaves the same. I believe 
> the change was made to be more Linux compatible and allow greater 
> portability.
> 
> > 
> > 
> > What do people think should be done?
> That's a tough one. Break Linux compatibility or break BSD 
> compatibility?
> 
> Generally Linux users use ps -ef which we don't support and columns are 
> different so, Linux compatibility is... well just isn't.
> 
> My vote is to revert and have an environment variable with defaults, 
> e.g., PS=--linux or something similar.
> 
> 

Linux compatibility is good and desirable, right up to the point where
it stomps on BSD compatibility.  I think we should revert to historic
behavior.

I'm agnostic about whether an env var is a good idea or not.  I use the
env vars for LESS and TOP and love the idea, but hate hate hate the
names (I've fought with conflicts on the too-common name TOP multiple
times over the years, most recently just last week my env var TOP
confused some makefile that had a TOP var in it).  Could the var be
named something like PS_OPTS?

-- Ian