(see ) is a
command-line
A command-line interpreter or command-line processor uses a command-line interface (CLI) to receive commands from a user in the form of lines of text. This provides a means of setting parameters for the environment, invoking executables and pro ...
utility initially written for use with the
Solaris 7
Solaris is a proprietary Unix operating system originally developed by Sun Microsystems. After the Sun acquisition by Oracle in 2010, it was renamed Oracle Solaris.
Solaris superseded the company's earlier SunOS in 1993, and became known for ...
operating system in 1998. It has since been reimplemented for
Linux
Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, which ...
and some
BSD
The Berkeley Software Distribution or Berkeley Standard Distribution (BSD) is a discontinued operating system based on Research Unix, developed and distributed by the Computer Systems Research Group (CSRG) at the University of California, Berk ...
s.
As with the and commands, is used to send
signals
In signal processing, a signal is a function that conveys information about a phenomenon. Any quantity that can vary over space or time can be used as a signal to share messages between observers. The ''IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing'' ...
to
processes. The command allows the use of extended
regular expression
A regular expression (shortened as regex or regexp; sometimes referred to as rational expression) is a sequence of characters that specifies a search pattern in text. Usually such patterns are used by string-searching algorithms for "find" or ...
patterns and other matching criteria.
Example usage
Kill the most recently created process:
pkill -n acroread
Send a
USR1 signal to process:
pkill -USR1 acroread
See also
Some other unix commands related to process management and killing include:
* , which sends signals processes by
process ID
In computing, the process identifier (a.k.a. process ID or PID) is a number used by most operating system kernels—such as those of Unix, macOS and Windows—to uniquely identify an active process. This number may be used as a parameter in various ...
instead of by pattern-matching against the name.
* , which changes the priority of a process.
* and , which display a list of processes and their resource usage; can send signals to processes directly from this list.
* , a command-line utility to send signals or report process status. is favoured over it.
References
*
*
External links
Oracle: Man pages pgrep, pkill
{{Unix commands
Unix process- and task-management-related software