pidof: size optimizations (-50 bytes)

1 files changed, 29 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/libbb/find_pid_by_name.c b/libbb/find_pid_by_name.c
index e98616940..13ccb545d 100644
--- a/libbb/find_pid_by_name.c
+++ b/libbb/find_pid_by_name.c
@@ -9,6 +9,35 @@
 
 #include "libbb.h"
 
+/*
+In Linux we have three ways to determine "process name":
+1. /proc/PID/stat has "...(name)...", among other things. It's so-called "comm" field.
+2. /proc/PID/cmdline's first NUL-terminated string. It's argv[0] from exec syscall.
+3. /proc/PID/exe symlink. Points to the running executable file.
+
+kernel threads:
+ comm: thread name
+ cmdline: empty
+ exe: <readlink fails>
+
+executable
+ comm: first 15 chars of base name
+ (if executable is a symlink, then first 15 chars of symlink name are used)
+ cmdline: argv[0] from exec syscall
+ exe: points to executable (resolves symlink, unlike comm)
+
+script (an executable with #!/path/to/interpreter):
+ comm: first 15 chars of script's base name (symlinks are not resolved)
+ cmdline: /path/to/interpreter (symlinks are not resolved)
+ (script name is in argv[1], args are pushed into argv[2] etc)
+ exe: points to interpreter's executable (symlinks are resolved)
+
+If FEATURE_PREFER_APPLETS=y (and more so if FEATURE_SH_STANDALONE=y),
+some commands started from busybox shell, xargs or find are started by
+execXXX("/proc/self/exe", applet_name, params....)
+and therefore comm field contains "exe".
+*/
+
 /* find_pid_by_name()
  *
  *  Modified by Vladimir Oleynik for use with libbb/procps.c