PKILL(1) General Commands Manual PKILL(1)
NAME
pgrep, pkill – find or signal processes by name
SYNOPSIS
pgrep [-Lafilnoqvx] [-F pidfile] [-G gid] [-P ppid] [-U uid] [-d delim]
[-g pgrp] [-t tty] [-u euid] pattern ...
pkill [-signal] [-ILafilnovx] [-F pidfile] [-G gid] [-P ppid] [-U uid]
[-g pgrp] [-t tty] [-u euid] pattern ...
DESCRIPTION
The pgrep command searches the process table on the running system and
prints the process IDs of all processes that match the criteria given on
the command line.
The pkill command searches the process table on the running system and
signals all processes that match the criteria given on the command line.
The following options are available:
-F pidfile Restrict matches to a process whose PID is stored in
the pidfile file.
-G gid Restrict matches to processes with a real group ID in
the comma-separated list gid.
-I Request confirmation before attempting to signal each
process.
-L The pidfile file given for the -F option must be locked
with the flock(2) syscall or created with pidfile(3).
-P ppid Restrict matches to processes with a parent process ID
in the comma-separated list ppid.
-U uid Restrict matches to processes with a real user ID in
the comma-separated list uid.
-d delim Specify a delimiter to be printed between each process
ID. The default is a newline. This option can only be
used with the pgrep command.
-a Include process ancestors in the match list. By
default, the current pgrep or pkill process and all of
its ancestors are excluded (unless -v is used).
-f Match against full argument lists. The default is to
match against process names.
-g pgrp Restrict matches to processes with a process group ID
in the comma-separated list pgrp. The value zero is
taken to mean the process group ID of the running pgrep
or pkill command.
-i Ignore case distinctions in both the process table and
the supplied pattern.
-l Long output. For pgrep, print the process name in
addition to the process ID for each matching process.
If used in conjunction with -f, print the process ID
and the full argument list for each matching process.
For pkill, display the kill command used for each
process killed.
-n Select only the newest (most recently started) of the
matching processes.
-o Select only the oldest (least recently started) of the
matching processes.
-q For pgrep, Do not write anything to standard output.
-t tty Restrict matches to processes associated with a
terminal in the comma-separated list tty. Terminal
names may be of the form ttyxx or the shortened form
xx. A single dash (‘-’) matches processes not
associated with a terminal.
-u euid Restrict matches to processes with an effective user ID
in the comma-separated list euid.
-v Reverse the sense of the matching; display processes
that do not match the given criteria.
-x Require an exact match of the process name, or argument
list if -f is given. The default is to match any
substring.
-signal A non-negative decimal number or symbolic signal name
specifying the signal to be sent instead of the default
TERM. This option is valid only when given as the
first argument to pkill.
If any pattern operands are specified, they are used as extended regular
expressions to match the command name or full argument list of each
process.
Note that a running pgrep or pkill process will never consider itself as
a potential match.
EXIT STATUS
The pgrep and pkill utilities return one of the following values upon
exit:
0 One or more processes were matched.
1 No processes were matched.
2 Invalid options were specified on the command line.
3 An internal error occurred.
EXAMPLES
Show the pid of the process holding the /tmp/.X0-lock pid file:
$ pgrep -F /tmp/.X0-lock
1211
Show long output for firefox processes:
$ pgrep -l firefox
1312 firefox
1309 firefox
1288 firefox
1280 firefox
1279 firefox
1278 firefox
1277 firefox
1264 firefox
Same as above but just showing the pid of the most recent process:
$ pgrep -n firefox
1312
Look for vim processes. Match against the full argument list:
$ pgrep -f vim
44968
30790
Same as above but matching against the ‘list’ word and showing the full
argument list:
$ pgrep -f -l list
30790 vim list.txt
Send SIGSTOP signal to processes that are an exact match:
$ pkill -SIGSTOP -f -x "vim list.txt"
Without -f names over 19 characters will silently fail:
$ vim this_is_a_very_long_file_name &
[1] 36689
$
[1]+ Stopped vim this_is_a_very_long_file_name
$ pgrep "vim this"
$
Same as above using the -f flag:
$ pgrep -f "vim this"
36689
SEE ALSO
kill(1), killall(1), ps(1), flock(2), kill(2), sigaction(2), pidfile(3),
re_format(7)
HISTORY
The pkill and pgrep utilities first appeared in NetBSD 1.6. They are
modelled after utilities of the same name that appeared in Sun Solaris 7.
They made their first appearance in FreeBSD 5.3.
AUTHORS
Andrew Doran <ad@NetBSD.org>
macOS 15.2 October 5, 2020 macOS 15.2