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Comment by sciurus | Hacker News Reader

ps has a nasty habit of truncating its output. Piping it into cat is a way around this. E.G.

  $ echo $COLUMNS
  118

  $ ps -fp 14706
  UID        PID  PPID  C STIME TTY          TIME CMD
  root     14706 14705  0 Jan29 pts/3    00:00:00 sudo -p [local sudo] Password:  python /usr/lib/sshuttle/main.py pytho

  $ ps -fp 14706 | cat
  UID        PID  PPID  C STIME TTY          TIME CMD
  root     14706 14705  0 Jan29 pts/3    00:00:00 sudo -p [local sudo] Password:  python /usr/lib/sshuttle/main.py python -v --firewall 12300 0

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Most generally, it will trick any command into thinking that it's not writing to a tty ; so piping into cat will often remove colors.

Of course if you want colours, you can often force programs to use them anyway. For example, I use the alias:

  alias new='ls -lthr --color=always | tail'

Normally ls will not use colours when writing to a pipe (not a tty).

Using the -ww flag will produce unlimited width output

Thanks! I'd searched the ps manpage for truncate and length. I don't know why I didn't think to look for width.

"... Piping it into cat is a way around this. ..."

I've always preferred less - lets you scroll backwards & forwards through the piped output.

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