How to prevent ps from truncating the process name

Question

Following command outputs only first 25 characters of the process name (cmd) on the screen. How do I get it to display the full process name?

 ps -eo pid,cmd,etime

Answer 1

The simplest thing you can do is swap the order of outputs: if cmd is last, it will be extended to the full width of the terminal:

ps -eo pid,etime,cmd

If that's still not sufficient, you can add a -w (wide) output modifier

ps -ewo pid,etime,cmd

An additional w gives even wider output

ps -ewwo pid,etime,cmd

(In both of these cases, the output may be wrapped by the terminal.) If you really must have the original field order, then you can specify an explicit width for the cmd field using the syntax field:width e.g.

ps -eo pid,cmd:80,etime

This can be combined with the -w flag(s) if necessary e.g.

ps -ewo pid,cmd:160,etime

The width of a particular output column can also be forced wider by using a longer header string e.g.

ps -eo pid,cmd=my_very_very_very_long_command_that_I_want_to_see_more_of,etime

Answer 2

Pipe the output to cat.

ps -eo pid,cmd,etime | cat

Answer 3

ps -A  -o pid,user:20,%cpu,%mem,comm,args