1PS(1) User Commands PS(1)
2
6 ps - report a snapshot of the current processes.
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9 ps [options]
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12 ps displays information about a selection of the active processes. If
13 you want a repetitive update of the selection and the displayed
14 information, use top(1) instead.
15 This version of ps accepts several kinds of options:
17 1 UNIX options, which may be grouped and must be preceded by a dash.
19 2 BSD options, which may be grouped and must not be used with a dash.
20 3 GNU long options, which are preceded by two dashes.
21 Options of different types may be freely mixed, but conflicts can
23 appear. There are some synonymous options, which are functionally
24 identical, due to the many standards and ps implementations that this
25 ps is compatible with.
26 Note that "ps -aux" is distinct from "ps aux". The POSIX and UNIX
28 standards require that "ps -aux" print all processes owned by a user
29 named "x", as well as printing all processes that would be selected by
30 the -a option. If the user named "x" does not exist, this ps may
31 interpret the command as "ps aux" instead and print a warning. This
32 behavior is intended to aid in transitioning old scripts and habits.
33 It is fragile, subject to change, and thus should not be relied upon.
34 By default, ps selects all processes with the same effective user ID
36 (euid=EUID) as the current user and associated with the same terminal
37 as the invoker. It displays the process ID (pid=PID), the terminal
38 associated with the process (tname=TTY), the cumulated CPU time in
39 [DD-]hh:mm:ss format (time=TIME), and the executable name (ucmd=CMD).
40 Output is unsorted by default.
41 The use of BSD-style options will add process state (stat=STAT) to the
43 default display and show the command args (args=COMMAND) instead of the
44 executable name. You can override this with the PS_FORMAT environment
45 variable. The use of BSD-style options will also change the process
46 selection to include processes on other terminals (TTYs) that are owned
47 by you; alternately, this may be described as setting the selection to
48 be the set of all processes filtered to exclude processes owned by
49 other users or not on a terminal. These effects are not considered
50 when options are described as being "identical" below, so -M will be
51 considered identical to Z and so on.
52 Except as described below, process selection options are additive. The
54 default selection is discarded, and then the selected processes are
55 added to the set of processes to be displayed. A process will thus be
56 shown if it meets any of the given selection criteria.
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59 To see every process on the system using standard syntax:
60 ps -e
61 ps -ef
62 ps -eF
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