What is the difference between ps -aux
and ps aux
? I wonder it's more than a mere matter of syntax and "portability". Which one is better to use in Ubuntu?
Despite there are some similar question, I'm interested in this specific difference.
What is the difference between ps -aux
and ps aux
? I wonder it's more than a mere matter of syntax and "portability". Which one is better to use in Ubuntu?
Despite there are some similar question, I'm interested in this specific difference.
BSD and AT&T developed incompatible versions of
ps
. The options without a leading dash are the BSD style while those with a leading dash are AT&T Unix style.The ps man page has this to say too:
Linux opted to support both.
ps -au{user}
will error out if you provide a non-existing user. See:Ubuntu/Canonical opted to show an error. Debian opted to give the same output to both
ps -aux
andps aux
. All in all, pretty confusing. But as stated: this is/was to make scripts compatible. And you can use what you feel happy with.