Beefy Boxes and Bandwidth Generously Provided by pair Networks
go ahead... be a heretic
 
PerlMonks  

How do I change my program's name under ps? ($0='abc' is messed up)

by entropy (Sexton)
on May 25, 2001 at 04:21 UTC ( [id://83181]=perlquestion: print w/replies, xml ) Need Help??

entropy has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

My goal is to change the process' name. According to the FAQ, I should just assign to the special $0 variable. This works a little, but the program's name now has four or five lines of spaces after it (when doing a 'ps axww'). Sometimes it works good, sometimes it doesn't. In fact, it seems that long values work, whereas shorter values have the spaces appended.
  • Comment on How do I change my program's name under ps? ($0='abc' is messed up)

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: How do I change my program's name under ps? ($0='abc' is messed up)
by rpc (Monk) on May 25, 2001 at 04:37 UTC
    This is because when the process is created, the first argument is allocated to be the size of the actual process name. Try appending a \0 to your fake process name.
[reply]
      \0 doesn't help on linux... On FreeBSD it seems to work with or without the \0 (in addition to displaying the original process name).

      If the memory is pre-allocated, then do I have to worry about overflowing it?

[reply]
        Nope, you don't have to worry about overflowing it in Perl. You do however, when dealing with argv[0] in C, etc.
[reply]

Back to Seekers of Perl Wisdom

Log In?
Username:
Password:

What's my password?
Create A New User
Domain Nodelet?

www.com | www.net | www.org
Node Status?
node history
Node Type: perlquestion [id://83181]
Approved by root
help
Chatterbox?
and the web crawler heard nothing...

How do I use this? • Last hour • Other CB clients
Other Users?
Others making s'mores by the fire in the courtyard of the Monastery: (9)
As of 2024-04-23 14:49 GMT
Sections?
Information?
Find Nodes?
Leftovers?
    Voting Booth?

    No recent polls found