Messages in this thread |  | | Subject | [ANSWER] Re: /proc/<pid>/cmdline | Date | Wed, 10 Jul 1996 23:44:20 -0400 | From | Peter Couvares <> |
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a.kruczkowski@ic.ac.uk (Mr A.M. Kruczkowski) writes to linux-kernel:
> A brief observation that on my system, cat of /proc/<pid>/cmdline > gives the cmdline minus spaces between the arguments. Is this > correct, is my system in need of an upgrade somewhere, or is it an > error?
No -- they're actually delimited by null characters, which don't appear as anything when output to your screen. If you "cat /proc/<pid>/cmdline | less" you'll see things more clearly.
Just about anything, including a space, can be a valid character _within_ an argument, so only a null can properly delimit two arguments -- that's why they're used instead of spaces.
Consider the following command:
grep "foo bar" baz
You couldn't accurately represent that in /proc/<pid>/cmdline if spaces delimited arguments.
-Peter
PS: I'm not sure this thread belonged in linux-kernel to begin with; move further discussion to email, please.
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