readproctitle (8)

readproctitle L D

L consists of any number of arguments. D is one argument consisting of at least five dots.

readproctitle reads data into the end of D, shifting D to the left to make room. This means that the most recent data is visible to process-listing tools such as ps(1). readproctitle always leaves three dots at the left of D.

For example, if

readproctitle io errors: ....................

reads the data

fatal error xyz warning abc

then its command-line arguments change to

readproctitle io errors: ... xyz!warning abc!

with a newline character in place of each !. Process-listing tools typically show the newline character as ? or \n.

readproctitle exits when it reaches the end of input.

Beware that most implementations of ps(1) have small argument-length limits. These limits apply to the total length of readproctitle L D. I have not seen a system with a limit below 512 bytes.

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