NAME

pgrep, pkill - find or signal processes by name and other attributes

SYNOPSIS

pgrep [-flnovx] [-d delim] [-P ppidlist] [-g pgrplist] [-s sidlist] [-u euidlist] [-U uidlist] [-G gidlist] [-t termlist] [pattern]

pkill [-signal] [-fnovx] [-P ppidlist] [-g pgrplist] [-s sidlist] [-u euidlist] [-U uidlist] [-G gidlist] [-t termlist] [pattern]

DESCRIPTION

Pgrep searches the currently active processes for occurences of the specified pattern and prints the process IDs of the matching ones. Pattern is treated as an extended regular expression as described in egrep(1). A number of options can be used in addition to the pattern (or without specifying pattern) to further restrict the set of matching processes. Multiple criteria can be specified for each of these options, separated by commas or blanks, or by giving the option more than once. In this case, all processes that match any of the given criteria are considered matches. If more than one kind of criterion is specified, a process must match each kind of criterion.

Pkill is similar to pgrep, but a signal (SIGTERM by default) is sent to matching processes instead of printing its process ID. The signal can be changed with the -signal argument; this argument must appear before all options to be recognized. Signal can be either numeric or symbolic with the SIG prefix omitted (as in QUIT for SIGQUIT).

Zombie processes and the current pgrep or pkill process are never included.

Both commands accept the following options:

-d delim: Use the specified delimiter string to separate process IDs in output. By default, a newline character is used. This option is accepted by pgrep only.
-f: Use the command line arguments of each process instead of the name of its executable file for matching, and, if -l is also specified, for printing.
-g pgrplist: Restrict matches to processes whose process group ID appears in pgrplist. If an ID is `0', the process group ID of the current process is used.
-G gidlist: Restrict matches to processes whose real group ID appears in gidlist.
-l: Print the command name in addition to the process ID. This option is accepted by pgrep only.
-n: Select only the newest (most recently created) process of all processes that matched the other criteria. Cannot be combined with -o.
-o: Select only the oldest (least recently created) process of all processes that matched the other criteria. Cannot be combined with -n.
-P ppidlist: Restrict matches to processes whose parent ID appears in ppidlist.
-s sidlist: Restrict matches to processes that are members of a session given in sidlist. If an ID is `0', the session ID of the current process is used.
-t termlist: Restrict matches to processes that run on any controlling terminal given in termlist. Terminal specifications have the format described in ps(1).
-u uidlist: Restrict matches to processes whose effective user ID appears in uidlist.
-U uidlist: Restrict matches to processes whose real user ID appears in uidlist.
-v: Reverse the match, that is, select all processes that fail to fulfill the given criteria.
-x: Require the entire process name to be matched, as if pattern was surrounded by `^( )$'.

EXAMPLES

Determine the process ID of the inetd process:

pgrep -x inetd

Print all processes that have a first argument starting with /bin/ along with their arguments:

pgrep -l -f ´^/bin/´

Send a SIGHUP signal to all processes that are owned by either the root or the daemon user and are children of the init process (process ID 1):

pkill -HUP -u root,daemon -P 1

ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES

LANG, LC_ALL: See locale(7).
LC_COLLATE: Affects the collation order for range expressions, equivalence classes, and collation symbols in extended regular expressions.
LC_CTYPE: Determines the mapping of bytes to characters and the availability and composition of character classes in extended regular expressions.

DIAGNOSTICS

Pgrep and Pkill exit with

0: if matching processes were found, and the -v option was not specified;
1: if no matching processes were found, or the -v option was specified without any matches;
2: if an invalid command line argument was found;
3: on fatal errors.

NOTES

Command names are limited to 18 characters, process arguments to 80 characters; excess characters are stripped.