UNIX for Advanced & Expert Users

As a way of information `ps' has some more options that might allow you to tailor more custom output that just `ps aux'.

For example if you want to kill any processes containing "a.out" for the user 6243:

Code:

kill $(ps -U 6243 | awk '$5 ~ /a\.out/ {print $1}')

As a "rule of thumb" anything that grep can do, awk can also achieve. So if you use awk, you most likely do not have to bother with another filter like grep.

There's also a very useful unix utility named `lsof' that can be handy when dealing with processes. If your system has it installed it is worthwhile to get familiar with it.
If you want to kill only the processes number of the program top that user 6243 has initiated.

Code:

kill $(lsof -t -u 6243 -a -c top)

-t: will output only the pid
-u: user id or name
-a: ANDing operator
-c: command

or - \. escapes the metacharacter . turning it into a regular character without special meaning. In regex there are several metacharacters a few are: ?.^$*+