Bash programming

sceadu · 07-25-2005, 08:25 PM

Hi,
I'm writing a bash script to kill a process.

This is what I wrote:

#!/bin/sh

pidof -s 'proc_to_be_killed' > /dev/null

echo $?

if [ $? -eq "0" ]
then
echo "proc_to_be_killed is not running"
else
kill $?
echo "proc_to_be_killed stopped"
fi

However, I always get 0 from $?. If I run pidof -s 'proc_to_be_killed' manually from command, it always return the process id(not 0).

How do I capture the process id as it seems that $? is not giving me the process id returned from running pidof.

Please advise.
Thanks.

Matir · 07-25-2005, 08:29 PM

I'd like to point out that in your if statement, you are testing the return value of echo, not pidof.

Additionally, nowhere do I find it documented that pidof should return the process id as an exit code, but instead, it prints out the process id.

chrism01 · 07-25-2005, 08:30 PM

$? is the shell final/exit status of the last cmd executed.
Usually set to zero if ok, else some num for various errors etc.
Try assigning the output of pidof eg
proc_id=`pidof -s proc_to_be_killed`
NB: those are backquotes (top-left on keybd), not single quotes.

sceadu · 07-26-2005, 01:02 AM

Thanks.

Matir · 07-26-2005, 01:03 AM

you're welcome.