12-10-2009
Kill, child, orphan, zombie and the likes are there since the seventies and are unlikely to disappear in the Unix context. They are actually pretty good metaphors while perhaps not "politically correct". Your proposal reminds me how many Unix people were upset when directories started to be referred as folders. Gratuitous changes are usually not welcome.
The first example is interesting as kill, both as a system call and a command, is a partly a misnomer. Kill is sending a signal to a process that effectively kill that process or not depending on settings. Its most frequent use is to kill so the name still seems adequate to me.
"stop" won't do as it is an existing special case which imply the process is resumable. "remove" might also be confusing as it is so commonly associated with unlinking a file.
You might want to post your aliases and start a poll about them ...
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kill(2) System Calls Manual kill(2)
Name
kill - send signal to a process
Syntax
#include <sys/types.h>
#include <signal.h>
kill(pid, sig)
pid_t pid;
int sig;
Description
The system call sends the signal sig to a process specified by the process number pid. The sig can be a signal specified in a call or it
can be 0. If the sig is 0, error checking is performed, but a signal is not sent. This call can be used to check the validity of pid.
The sending and receiving processes must have the same effective user ID, otherwise this call is restricted to the superuser with the
exception of the signal SIGCONT. The signal SIGCONT can always be sent to a child or grandchild of the current process.
If the process number is 0, the signal is sent to all other processes in the sender's process group.
If the process number is negative but not -1, the signal is sent to all processes whose process-group-id is equal to the absolute value of
the process number.
The above two options are variants of
If the process number is -1, and the user is the superuser, the signal is broadcast for all processes except to system processes and the
process sending the signal.
Processes may send signals to themselves.
Environment
System Five
POSIX
When your program is compiled in the System V or POSIX environment, a signal is sent if either the real or effective uid of the sending
process matches the real or saved-set-uid (as described in ) of the receiving process. In addition, any process can use a pid of -1, and
the signal is sent to all processes subject to these permission checks.
In POSIX mode, the pid argument is of type pid_t.
Return Values
Upon successful completion, a value of 0 is returned. Otherwise, a value of -1 is returned, and is set to indicate the error.
Diagnostics
The system call fails under the following conditions:
[EINVAL] The sig is not a valid signal number.
[EPERM] The sending process is not the superuser, and its effective user ID does not match the effective user ID of the receiving
process.
[ESRCH] No process can be found corresponding to that specified by pid.
See Also
execve(2), getpgrp(2), getpid(2), killpg(2), sigvec(2), pause(3)
kill(2)