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From: keithp@azure.UUCP (Keith Packard)
Newsgroups: net.unix-wizards,tek.general
Subject: Re: Parenthesized arguments in a "ps" list
Message-ID: <2342@azure.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 14-Nov-83 14:43:48 EST
Article-I.D.: azure.2342
Posted: Mon Nov 14 14:43:48 1983
Date-Received: Tue, 15-Nov-83 21:15:56 EST
References: <1466@tekig1.UUCP>
Organization: Tektronix, Beaverton OR
Lines: 13

This is in reply to the author that had problems with ps giving command
names in parenthesis when a long environment variable was set.
The reason for this occurance is that ps looks backwards in the user stack
segment for the argument list, the top-most stuff is the environment and
then comes the argument list (see exec(2)).  Ps only looks a little way
into the user segment to keep it running at a reasonable speed.  If an
extremely long environment variable is in the stack, ps will not look
far enough down the stack to find the arguments.  Not finding those
arguments, ps prints out the command name in parenthesis to indicate this.
Of course, this only relates to PDP11 unixes and things that have similar
exec formats (vaxen...)
-keith packard
tektronix!tekmdp!keithp