I notice you still have the space between the dash (-) and the "auwwx". My test code refuses to find "inder" when I leave the space between the dash and the auwwx (and I know for CERTAIN that I'm currently running the Finder), but seems to find it just fine with a standard width (80 chars) window, again when I've shrank my window to 35 chars wide, all the while the output of the command in Terminal is clearly beyond that width:

My-Computer()$ ps -auwwx | grep inder
chargrill   255   0.0  2.2   228420  23320  ??  S    16Feb06   1:44.33
+ /System/Library/CoreServices/Finder.app/Contents/MacOS/Finder -psn_0
+_917505
chargrill 23153   0.0  0.0    27820      4  p2  R+   12:08PM   0:00.00
+ grep inder
My-Computer()$ ps - auwwx | grep inder
23155  p2  R+     0:00.00 grep inder
My-Computer()$
[download]

When I type "ps - auwwx", I get nothing like what I expect to see, which is an extra wide listing of all processes from all users running on the computer, instead I see (apparently) only the login (interactive) processes currently running as my user:

My-Computer()$ ps - auwwx
  PID  TT  STAT      TIME COMMAND
12006  p1  S      0:00.10 -bash
18744  p1  S+     0:00.22 /usr/bin/perl /usr/bin/perldoc perlop
18753  p1  S+     0:00.02 /usr/bin/less /tmp/Zf90IVbUVV
12073  p2  S      0:00.69 -bash
 3319  p3  Ss+    0:00.09 -bash
15497  p4  S      0:00.14 -bash
20550  p4  S+     0:00.21 /usr/bin/perl /usr/bin/perldoc perlvar
20559  p4  S+     0:00.06 /usr/bin/less /tmp/rTkTg152OS
[download]

Vs.

ls-Computer()$ ps -auwwx | more
USER       PID %CPU %MEM      VSZ    RSS  TT  STAT STARTED      TIME C
+OMMAND
chargrill   936   6.6  1.6   222620  17208  ??  S    16Feb06  21:48.75
+ /Applications/Utilities/Terminal.app/Contents/MacOS/Terminal -psn_0_
+5898241
chargrill 18190   4.1 15.4   477220 161736  ??  S    Tue03PM 129:48.52
+ /Applications/Safari.app/Contents/MacOS/Safari -psn_0_71303169
windowse   103   3.6  4.0   257112  41960  ??  Ss   16Feb06 352:48.88 
+/System/Library/Frameworks/ApplicationServices.framework/Frameworks/C
+oreGraphics.framework/Resources/WindowServer -daemon
---<SNIP>---
[download]

Please try it getting rid of the space, I beg of you! :-) I've never seen that particular incarnation of command line options to ps. Either with the dash immediately preceeding the options, or leaving the dash out (Linux will complain about a superfluous dash). But not ps_-_auwwx.

$/  =  q#(\w)#  ;  sub  sig { print scalar reverse  join  ' ',  @_  } 
+ sig
map { s$\$/\$/$\$2\$1$g && $_ } split( ' ', ",erckha rlPe erthnoa stJu
+" );
[download]