kill

kill: send a signal to a process.

Synopsis

kill [-s signal | -signal] [–] pid…
kill -l

Description

kill sends a signal to each pid, SIGTERM unless another is given. A negative pid is a process group: every process in it gets the signal. Give it after – so it isn’t read as a signal.

A signal is a name, with or without its SIG prefix, in any case (-KILL, -sigint), or its number (-9). The signals mcos knows are SIGHUP (1), SIGINT (2), SIGKILL (9), SIGPIPE (13), SIGTERM (15) and SIGCHLD (17). SIGKILL cannot be caught or ignored: the process ends at once and runs none of its code.

Options

-s signal, -signal: The signal to send.
-l: Lists the signals, by number.
–: Ends the options: what follows is pids.

Exit status

0 if every signal was sent; 1 if any failed (no such process, a pid that isn’t a number, an unknown signal); 2 with no pid.

Examples

kill 12
kill -9 12 13
kill -s INT 7
kill -TERM -- -5