I just noticed this morning that the newest version of ps, in procps 2.0.7, supports both the standard and BSD format for the command. Personally, I've grown up using ps -ef, which I like because it lists both the pid and ppid of a process. I know that the older version ps al gave generally the same thing, it always tripped me up jumping from HPUX to Linux and back again. Just an observation. -mk

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If it ain't broke, fix it till it is.