Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site brl-tgr.ARPA Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!allegra!bellcore!decvax!genrad!panda!talcott!harvard!seismo!brl-tgr!tgr!mcb@tisstyx From: mcb@tisstyx (Michael C. Berch) Newsgroups: net.unix-wizards Subject: Re: Why does 4.2 ps put commands in parentheses? Message-ID: <8749@brl-tgr.ARPA> Date: Wed, 27-Feb-85 20:17:47 EST Article-I.D.: brl-tgr.8749 Posted: Wed Feb 27 20:17:47 1985 Date-Received: Sat, 2-Mar-85 03:27:24 EST Sender: news@brl-tgr.ARPA Lines: 19 This puzzled me for a while, too. A command name in parentheses means that ps couln't find the arguments on the stack, and the output is the one used if you type "ps -c". Why does this occur? If you have an exceptionally lengthy vector of environment strings, they will push the argument list pointer out of the range where ps expects it to be. Ps looks, decides that it can;t find the args, and gives up and does a "ps -c", with the command name (from the acct structure, I think -- though I haven't looked) in parentheses. So people with exceptionally verbose environments might have this happen to them. It happened to me when I installed a new terminal, changed my TERMCAP (it was still getting set during .login), and suddenly this mystery began. The easy solution is to shorten your environment; the hard solution is to hack ps and get it to be more energetic about looking for the arg list.