What is the modern equivalent of "ps aux" on macOS Sierra?

Question

The BSD backend of MacOS has ps built in. The BSD General Commands Manual says that

The biggest change is in the interpretation of the -u option, which now displays processes belonging to the specified username(s). Thus, "ps -aux" will fail (unless you want to know about user "x"). As a convenience, however, "ps aux" still works as it did in Tiger.

I am wondering what the current standard is for this—dare I write—obsolete command+parameter sequence.

@MateuszSzlosek Nothing except that it is deprecated. Read the quote carefully. I assume the reason for its retirement is that it does not follow the standard parameter scheme of -p where p is a parameter character. (or --parameter where p is spelled out) — Jonathan Komar, Feb 13 '17 at 07:33

oa- · Accepted Answer · 2017-02-13T22:10:59.457

26

To replicate ps aux (BSD style) in the AT&T version of ps, you have to use

ps -Ao user,pid,%cpu,%mem,vsz,rss,tt,stat,start,time,command

This command is compatible with scripts that expect the same output as ps aux.

The only difference is the sort order; ps aux sorts all processes by their start time whereas ps -Ao sorts them by PID.

ps -jef is a shorter command, but it will output different headers.:

USER
PID
PPID
PGID
SESS
JOBC
STAT
TT
TIME
COMMAND
UID
C
STIME
TTY

edited Feb 13 '17 at 22:10

answered Feb 13 '17 at 09:28

oa-

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2

Thanks. "The only difference is the sort order; ps aux sorts all processes by their start time whereas ps -Ao sorts them by PID." Can ps --sort bsdstart -Ao sort in start time? – Tim Dec 04 '18 at 15:08

What is the modern equivalent of "ps aux" on macOS Sierra?

1 Answers1