I have this line of code in a loop in shell: 
 pid=$(ps -l -p $pid | grep -v PPID | perl -ane 'print $F[4]')

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The idea is to get the parent of the process. Other code is checking for other conditions. But that's not the problem. The problem is that $F[4] only works on some 'ps'. For the 'ps' in Cygwin, I need to use $F[1]. Sooooo, I naively tried this: 
ppidi=4
[ $(uname) = 'Cygwin ] && ppidi=1

...

 pid=$(ps -l -p $pid | grep -v PPID | \
perl -ane 'print $F[$ARGV[0]]' $ppidi);

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which resulted in 
Can't open 1: No such file or directory.

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In short, once you use -n or -p, there is no way to use ARGV as arguments, and not have them sucked up as filenames to feed to the virtual while(<>) {} loop, is there?

In reply to -n and -p suck up ARGV no matter what by mpersico

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