ps (process status) command, PS_FORMAT how to set?

alexander · 12-17-2002, 08:12 AM

Hi!
I often use:
ps -e -o pid,ppid,user,tty,cmd

man page states that I could use $PS_FORMAT to set default format for ps. But it fails:

$ export PS_FORMAT='pid,ppid,user,tty,cmd'
$ ps
spec value pid,ppid,user,tty,cmd not found

at the same time
the following works fine:
$ export PS_FORMAT='pid'

Any idea?

PS> I tried a lot of options with $PS_FORMAT (AIX, BSD style) and no success

Mik · 12-17-2002, 09:53 AM

The man page isn't really clear on the PS_FORMAT variable. It does say that in general it's not good to set these variables. When I try setting it to more then one field ps just crashes and generates a core file.

Something you could do instead of setting the variable is create an alias, something like:

alias ps="ps -o pid,ppid,user,tty,cmd"

alexander · 12-18-2002, 03:38 AM

Quote:

alias ps="ps -o pid,ppid,user,tty,cmd"

That must be a good solution, thank you.