Options of the 'ps' utility

Question

Can someone please enlighten on what the difference is when passing the 'j' and '-l -y' options to the 'ps' utility.

An other good 'ps' resource is welcome too.

Thanks

Sawan

Update:

'man ps' tells me:

-j jobs format
j BSD job control format.

l display BSD long format.
-l long format. The -y option is often useful with this.
-y Do not show flags; show rss in place of addr. This option can only be used with -l.

for those options. I don't quite get what each mean.

Answer 1

GNU ps accepts options in the UNIX style (preceded by a dash), the BSD style (no dash) and the GNU style (long option names preceded by two dashes).

The styles affect what columns are shown and what processes are included. For example, the Unix-style -j and -l only include the current user on the current session. If I use BSD-style j or l then all my processes (my UID) on any terminal are included.

The first two pages of the man page discuss the differences between the styles and show some examples illustrating the differences.

Answer 2

Try using man ps to view the manual for the ps command.

Answer 3

Not sure if this is relevant or not but:

ps -u [username] | grep [process name]

is good for finding a particular process. Like when I've started an ssh session and can't remember where it's going :-)