Something like xkill, but just output the PID or resource ID, don't kill

musther · 10-29-2007, 07:37 PM

I want to write a script to do some things to processes which are producing specific windows. I want the user to be able to select a window. So I'm looking for a program which is basically just like xkill, but rather than closing the X connection, I simply want it to output the PID of the parent (or the X resource ID, from which I can hopefully find the parent PID).

I've even gone so far as to find the xkill source, but I don't know C, so that approach stopped there.

matthewg42 · 10-29-2007, 07:58 PM

I wrote a little script to do just this for my own use. Save this to a file called "xpid", make the file executable and put it in your path:

Code:

#!/bin/bash

wid=$(xwininfo  |grep 'Window id:' |cut -d" " -f4)
pid=$(xprop -id "$wid" |grep "^_NET_WM_PID" | cut -d" " -f3)

echo $pid |grep '^ *[0-9][0-9]* *$' && exit 0

cat <<EOF 1>&2
xpid ERROR: can't get PID for selected window.
            window ID:   $wid
            pid: $pid
EOF
exit 1

musther · 10-29-2007, 10:28 PM

Thanks a lot! That's a great little script, will be very handy.