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hvs
Asked: 2016-01-07 19:20:30 +0800 CST

How to prevent ps from truncating the process name

  • 772

Following command outputs only first 25 characters of the process name (cmd) on the screen. How do I get it to display the full process name?

 ps -eo pid,cmd,etime
ps

3 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    The simplest thing you can do is swap the order of outputs: if cmd is last, it will be extended to the full width of the terminal:

    ps -eo pid,etime,cmd

    If that's still not sufficient, you can add a -w (wide) output modifier

    ps -ewo pid,etime,cmd

    An additional w gives even wider output

    ps -ewwo pid,etime,cmd

    (In both of these cases, the output may be wrapped by the terminal.) If you really must have the original field order, then you can specify an explicit width for the cmd field using the syntax field:width e.g.

    ps -eo pid,cmd:80,etime

    This can be combined with the -w flag(s) if necessary e.g.

    ps -ewo pid,cmd:160,etime

    The width of a particular output column can also be forced wider by using a longer header string e.g.

    ps -eo pid,cmd=my_very_very_very_long_command_that_I_want_to_see_more_of,etime
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  2. ps -A  -o pid,user:20,%cpu,%mem,comm,args
    • 2

  3. Pipe the output to cat.

    ps -eo pid,cmd,etime | cat
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