[NTLUG:Discuss] kill command

[Rick Renshaw]

----- Original Message ----
From: Ralph Green <sfreader at sbcglobal.net>
To: NTLUG Discussion List <discuss at ntlug.org>
Sent: Saturday, June 13, 2009 2:30:21 AM
Subject: [NTLUG:Discuss] kill command

Howdy,
  I tried the following command and it does not quite work, and I don't
see why.  Any suggestions?

ps -A -o pid -o cmd | grep "update-notifier" | cut -c1-5 | kill

If I do it without that last bit, I get the pid of the process I want
to kill.  How do I need to change this to kill that process?  I know it
will also get the pid of the grep command and kill that process, but I
can't see that that would hurt anything.
Good day,
Ralph



In general if you have a list being piped from one command to another and you want a command to be executed with the list as the argument, use xargs:
ps -A -o pid -o cmd | grep "update-notifier" | cut -c1-5 | xargs kill

In this particular case, killall is a better choice.