Kill a program from bash


 
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Old 07-25-2014
In cases where pkill isn't available or where more than one invocation of mousepad might be running on your system (if your system can be configured with multiple devices that can be controlled by mousepad), the following might be safer and will user fewer system resources:
Code:
mousepad& mousepadPID=$!; sleep 3; kill $mousepadPID

or, as long as you don't start any other background jobs before you call kill, just:
Code:
mousepad& sleep 3; kill $!

The shell special parameter $! expands to the decimal process ID of the most recent background command. This is MUCH MUCH more efficient and MUCH less error prone than searching ps output or using pkill to identify that command's process ID.
 
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