[ILUG] A little grep mystery

[Kevin O' Riordan]

On Setting Orange, the 9th day of Confusion, Aidan Kehoe claimed:
> 
>  Ar an 4u la de mi 6, scriobh Brian Foster :
> 
>  >      #!/bin/bash                 #/bin/bash
>  >      export COLUMNS=1000         exec ps.real -w "$@"
>  >      exec ps.real "$@"
> 
> As I understand it, the left-hand one of those won't work, because GNU
> ps _ignores_ terminal settings (of which COLUMNS) is part when writing
> to a pipe. Of course, my local GNU ps doesn't do any of this at all; 
>
> $ ps --version
> procps version 2.0.6


my GNU ps seems to use the COLUMNS variable, as the (long, confusing)
manpage says it should.  The same manpage mentions nothing about
chooping output after 80 columns.

I also tried all of the PS_PERSONALITY options in the manpage, and all
of them do the same 80 column chop ...


	[kor at hoth log]$ ps --version
	procps version 2.0.4

	[kor at hoth log]$ ps -ef | grep squid
	proxy    23264     1  0 May13 ?        00:45:18 (squid)
	kor      17210  7865  0 14:45 pts/4    00:00:00 grep squid

	[kor at hoth log]$ ps -efw | grep squid
	proxy    23264     1  0 May13 ?        00:45:18 (squid)
	proxy    20959 23264  0 May14 ?        00:00:01 (ncsa_auth) /usr/local/proxy/squid/etc/userdb
	proxy    20960 23264  0 May14 ?        00:00:00 (ncsa_auth) /usr/local/proxy/squid/etc/userdb
	kor      17212  7865  0 14:45 pts/4    00:00:00 grep squid

	[kor at hoth log]$ export COLUMS=1000
	[kor at hoth log]$ ps -ef | grep squid
	proxy    23264     1  0 May13 ?        00:45:18 (squid)
	proxy    20959 23264  0 May14 ?        00:00:01 (ncsa_auth) /usr/local/proxy/squid/etc/userdb
	proxy    20960 23264  0 May14 ?        00:00:00 (ncsa_auth) /usr/local/proxy/squid/etc/userdb
	kor      17328  7865  0 14:49 pts/4    00:00:00 grep squid


blah
-kev