Package: procps Version: 2:3.3.12-2 Severity: wishlist File: /usr/share/man/man1/ps.1.gz
Man page says AIX FORMAT DESCRIPTORS This ps supports AIX format descriptors, which work somewhat like the formatting codes of printf(1) and printf(3). For example, the normal default output can be produced with this: ps -eo "%p %y %x %c". The NORMAL codes are described in the next section. $ ps -o "%p %y %x %c" PID TTY TIME COMMAND 1580 pts/2 00:00:00 bash 1817 pts/2 00:00:00 ps $ ps PID TTY TIME CMD 1580 pts/2 00:00:00 bash 1818 pts/2 00:00:00 ps So they actually differ by COMMAND vs. CMD. So that paragraph is wrong. Also don't use -e, as the default is many lines less than with -e. Also mention one can mix % and non % items, but must use separate -o stanzas: $ ps -o pid -o %c PID COMMAND 1212 bash 1920 ps Also please mention, quite near the top of the page, what the default output in fact is. OK I found it is $ ps -o "%p %y %x" -o ucmd By the way, also CODE NORMAL HEADER... %y tty TTY is wrong. %y tty TTY should be %y tname TTY as tty will produce TT. $ ps -o %y -o tty -o tname|sed 2q TTY TT TTY pts/0 pts/0 pts/0 (Perhaps also add a --limit option, so one doesn't need sed when testing as above.) Also at Print only the process IDs of syslogd: ps -C syslogd -o pid= mention how to get rid of blanks. Mention that the only way is to apparently alas rely on external programs: # ps -C rsyslogd -o pid= | tr -d ' ' 424 Also as I above do, use rsyslogd instead of syslogd so people can test without editing, as rsyslogd is what more people perhaps use these days. By the way, this is busted for n=1, $ for n in `seq 5`;do echo -n $n:; ps -e --lines $n --rows $n --headers|wc -l; done 1:116 2:230 3:173 4:154 5:144 Also be very careful, sometime on the man page you say "screen", sometimes you say "page", when apparently talking about the same thing. In fact there is a second meaning of "page" also there too... (memory page). Maybe they should all be "page" as we are talking more of a printer like output than top(1) output...