proc_pid_cmdline(5) File Formats Manual proc_pid_cmdline(5)
NAME
/proc/pid/cmdline - command line
DESCRIPTION
/proc/pid/cmdline
This read-only file holds the complete command line for the
process, unless the process is a zombie. In the latter case,
there is nothing in this file: that is, a read on this file will
return 0 characters.
For processes which are still running, the command-line arguments
appear in this file in the same layout as they do in process mem-
ory: If the process is well-behaved, it is a set of strings sepa-
rated by null bytes ('\0'), with a further null byte after the
last string.
This is the common case, but processes have the freedom to over-
ride the memory region and break assumptions about the contents
or format of the /proc/pid/cmdline file.
If, after an execve(2), the process modifies its argv strings,
those changes will show up here. This is not the same thing as
modifying the argv array.
Furthermore, a process may change the memory location that this
file refers via prctl(2) operations such as PR_SET_MM_ARG_START.
Think of this file as the command line that the process wants you
to see.
SEE ALSO
proc(5)
Linux man-pages 6.9.1 2024-06-15 proc_pid_cmdline(5)
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