I'm sure the solution to my problem is a simple one, but I just can't figure this one out.

I'm doing a ps -ef and I want to grep for a string, but I do not want the grep process to appear in the results.

Does anyone know what switch I can use to accomplish the above?

or

or

pgrep greps through running processes, but by default only returns the process id's.

will give you a bit more detail.

If you do that the other way round (ie grep out "grep" first) you get a usable exit code

It all depends on what you're looking for. If you're just looking for the command name:

Of course, if you need to search through the full paths and command args, you'll need to remove the "c" flag (and then grep out the grep).