kill - terminate a process
SYNOPSIS
kill [ -s signal | -p ] [ -a ] [ -- ] pid ...
kill -l [ signal ]
DESCRIPTION
The command kill sends the specified signal to the speci
fied process or process group. If no signal is specified,
the TERM signal is sent. The TERM signal will kill pro
cesses which do not catch this signal. For other pro
cesses, it may be necessary to use the KILL (9) signal,
since this signal cannot be caught.
Most modern shells have a builtin kill function, with a
usage rather similar to that of the command described
here. The `-a' and `-p' options, and the possibility to
specify pids by command name is a local extension.
OPTIONS
pid... Specify the list of processes that kill should sig
nal. Each pid can be one of five things:
n where n is larger than 0. The process with
pid n will be signaled.
0 All processes in the current process group
are signaled.
-1 All processes with pid larger than 1 will be
signaled.
-n where n is larger than 1. All processes in
process group n are signaled. When an argu
ment of the form `-n' is given, and it is
meant to denote a process group, either the
signal must be specified first, or the argu
ment must be preceded by a `--' option, oth
erwise it will be taken as the signal to
send.
commandname
All processes invoked using that name will
be signaled.
-s signal
Specify the signal to send. The signal may be
given as a signal name or number.
-l Print a list of signal names. These are found in
/usr/include/linux/signal.h
to processes with the same uid as the present pro
cess.
-p Specify that kill should only print the process id
(pid) of the named processes, and not send any sig
nals.
SEE ALSO
bash(1), tcsh(1), kill(2), sigvec(2), signal(7)
AUTHOR
Taken from BSD 4.4. The ability to translate process
names to process ids was added by Salvatore Valente <sva
lente@mit.edu>.
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