BASH - Check if PID Exists

Question

I want to stall the execution of my BASH script until a process is closed (I have the PID stored in a variable). I\'m thinking

while [PID IS RUNNING]; do
sleep 5         


        

Answer 1

It seems like you want

wait $pid

which will return when $pid finishes.

Otherwise you can use

ps -p $pid

to check if the process is still alive (this is more effective than kill -0 $pid because it will work even if you don't own the pid).