Something I've had on the back burner for a while (and completely
forgotten about) was some mods to ps(1) so that each field would be only
as wide as it needs to be, so that not only more can fit on the screen
but wide columns when they happen line up to.  Compare:

alpha:src/bin/psNEW 54> ps alx | head -5
  UID   PID  PPID CPU PRI  NI   VSZ  RSS WCHAN  STAT TT       TIME COMMAND
    0     0     0   0 -18   0     0 10720 schedu DLs  ??    0:00.00 (swapper)
    0     1     0   1  10   0   656  352 wait   Is   ??    0:00.02 init 
    0     2     0   0 -18   0     0 10720 daemon DL   ??    0:00.00 (pagedaemon)
    0     3     0   0 -18   0     0 10720 reaper DL   ??    0:00.00 (reaper)
alpha:src/bin/psNEW 55> ps aux | head -5
USER       PID %CPU %MEM   VSZ  RSS TT  STAT STARTED       TIME COMMAND
root         0  0.0  8.4     0 10784 ??  DLs  10:21AM    0:00.00 (swapper)
simonb     448  0.0  0.3   744  408 p0  ?+    3:50PM    0:00.00 ps aux 
simonb     180  0.0  0.9   320 1176 p0  T    11:45AM    0:00.07 less kern_proc.
simonb     134  0.0  0.9  1864 1176 p0  Ds   11:33AM    0:00.60 -tcsh 

with

alpha:src/bin/psNEW 56> ./obj.alpha/ps alx | head -5
 UID PID PPID CPU PRI  NI  VSZ   RSS WCHAN    STAT TT    TIME COMMAND
   0   0    0   0 -18   0    0 10848 schedule DLs  ?? 0:00.00 (swapper)
   0   1    0   1  10   0  656   352 wait     Is   ?? 0:00.02 init 
   0   2    0   0 -18   0    0 10848 daemon_s DL   ?? 0:00.00 (pagedaemon)
   0   3    0   0 -18   0    0 10848 reaper   DL   ?? 0:00.00 (reaper)
alpha:src/bin/psNEW 57> ./obj.alpha/ps aux | head -5
USER   PID %CPU %MEM  VSZ   RSS TT STAT STARTED    TIME COMMAND
root     0  0.0  8.5    0 10912 ?? DLs  10:21AM 0:00.00 (swapper)
simonb 452  0.0  0.3  744   400 p0 R+    3:50PM 0:00.00 ./obj.alpha/ps aux 
simonb 180  0.0  0.9  320  1176 p0 T    11:45AM 0:00.07 less kern_proc.c 
simonb 134  0.0  0.9 1864  1176 p0 Ds   11:33AM 0:00.60 -tcsh 

The main drawback for this is that it effectively runs through the
process list twice - once to calculate the maximum field widths and
another to display the results.  On my 166MHz PPro, this equates to 0.04
seconds to show 73 processes with the old ps(1) and 0.06 seconds with
the new.

Given that ps would be roughtly 50% slower, would these changes be a
good thing or a bad things to add to the source tree?

I just knocked up a "q"uick mode that doesn't do any column line-ups:

wincen:src/bin/psNEW 299> ./obj.i386/ps qaux | head
USER PID %CPU %MEM VSZ RSS TT STAT STARTED TIME COMMAND
root 0 0.0 6.1 0 7964 ?? DLs 11:43AM 0:00.02 (swapper)
simonb 1373 0.0 0.1 272 136 p0 R+ 4:20PM 0:00.00 ./obj.i386/ps aux 
simonb 1226 0.0 0.9 672 1108 p0 T 3:57PM 0:04.84 vi print.c ps.c ps.h 
simonb 213 0.0 0.7 916 864 p0 Ds 12:01PM 0:01.18 -tcsh 

This could be used in scripts where only the field number is important,
but then that would make any such scripts NetBSD specific because of the
extra option - probably not good...

Simon.