ps - Standard Format Specifiers (Continued), Environment Variables, and Personality

19th chunk of `ps.man`

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  KiB
                             (1024-byte  units).  Device mappings are currently
                             excluded;  this  is  subject  to  change.   (alias
                             vsize).

       wbytes      WBYTES    Number  of  bytes  which this process caused to be
                             sent to the storage layer.

       wcbytes     WCBYTES   Number of cancelled write bytes.

       wchan       WCHAN     name of the kernel function in which  the  process
                             is sleeping.

       wchars      WCHARS    Number  of  bytes  which  this task has caused, or
                             shall cause to be written to disk.

       wops        WOPS      Number of write  I/O  operations—that  is,  system
                             calls such as write(2) and pwrite(2).

ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES
       The following environment variables could affect ps:

       COLUMNS
          Override default display width.

       LINES
          Override default display height.

       PS_PERSONALITY
          Set  to  one of posix, old, linux, bsd, sun, digital...  (see section
          PERSONALITY below).

       CMD_ENV
          Set to one of posix, old, linux, bsd, sun, digital...   (see  section
          PERSONALITY below).

       I_WANT_A_BROKEN_PS
          Force obsolete command line interpretation.

       LC_TIME
          Date format.

       LIBPROC_HIDE_KERNEL
          Set  this to any value to hide kernel threads normally displayed with
          the ‐e option.  This  is  equivalent  to  selecting  ‐‐ppid  2  ‐p  2
          ‐‐deselect instead. Also works in BSD mode.

       PS_COLORS
          Not currently supported.

       PS_FORMAT
          Default  output  format override. You may set this to a format string
          of the type used for the -o option.  The DefSysV  and  DefBSD  values
          are particularly useful.

       POSIXLY_CORRECT
          Don’t find excuses to ignore bad "features".

       POSIX2
          When set to "on", acts as POSIXLY_CORRECT.

       UNIX95
          Don’t find excuses to ignore bad "features".

       _XPG
          Cancel CMD_ENV=irix non-standard behavior.

       In  general, it is a bad idea to set these variables.  The one exception
       is CMD_ENV or PS_PERSONALITY, which could be set  to  Linux  for  normal
       systems.   Without that setting, ps follows the useless and bad parts of
       the Unix98 standard.

PERSONALITY
       390        like the OS/390 OpenEdition ps
       aix

Title: ps - Standard Format Specifiers (Continued), Environment Variables, and Personality

Summary

This section details the remaining standard format specifiers for the `ps` command, specifically focusing on virtual memory size (vsz/VSZ), I/O statistics (wbytes, wcbytes, wchars, wops), and the kernel function a process is sleeping in (wchan). It then lists environment variables that can affect `ps`, such as COLUMNS, LINES, PS_PERSONALITY, CMD_ENV, LC_TIME, LIBPROC_HIDE_KERNEL, PS_COLORS, PS_FORMAT, POSIXLY_CORRECT, POSIX2, UNIX95, and _XPG. It advises caution when setting these variables, except for CMD_ENV or PS_PERSONALITY set to Linux. Finally, it touches upon the concept of "personality" settings affecting the behavior of `ps`.