Find the PID(s) of running processes and store as an array

Question

I\'m trying to write a bash script to find the PID of a running process then issue a kill command. I have it partially working, but the issue I face is that there may be mor

Answer 1

You don't need to use an array if you're going to immediately iterate over the results and perform an action:

for pid in $(ps -fe | grep '[p]rocess' | grep -v grep | awk '{print $2}'); do
    kill "$pid"
done

Notice we have to exclude grep's pid from the list of processes to kill. Or we could just use pgrep(1):

for pid in $(pgrep '[p]rocess'); do
    kill "$pid"
done

If you actually needed to store the pids in an array, pgrep is how you would do it:

pids=( $(pgrep '[p]rocess') )

Back to killing process. We can still do better. If we're just using pgrep to get a list of processes to kill them, why not go straight for pgrep's sister program: pkill(1)?

pkill '[p]rocess'

As it turns out, no need for bash scripting at all.