Shell Programming and Scripting

Hey all,

I got some help last week and It will temporarily work

We have a certain process that runs several processes within it. Here is an example:

Code:

 
   Date      -  0:04 process1-database: db (state) 
   Date      -  0:04 process1-database: db (state) 
   Date      -  0:04 process1-database: db (state) 
   Date      -  0:00 process1-database: (state2)

The code I was given to grep for this is the following:

Code:

 
ps -ef | grep state2

That will work, and should be good forever, but we are worried about another process coming up that might also have state2 in it.

Are there any alternatives to doing this?

How does the output look if you have more processes with state2 and what should be the output?

Hi Franklin,

My concern is that if I grep state2 and perhaps another application running on the box that is completely unrelated to the system that we are using returns "state2" after a grep, it could cause issues.

Yes we know what is your concern, but we have to know how exactly the output looks like, so we can try to identify unique pattern, grepping of which could solve your issue.

lets say I issue this command..

Code:

 
ps -ef | grep state2

and this is returned

Code:

 
Date      -  0:04 process1-database: db (state2) 
Date      -  0:00 process2-database: db (state2)

I'd need to narrow it down to grepping for process1 (state2)

I apologize if I am explaining this badly, I am still new to unix and scripting...I'm learning though

You can do something like:

Code:

ps -ef | grep 'process1.*(state2)'

Yet again you guys come through, thanks