is there any way to know the pid of a launched program?

Question

if I launch a bash script as a child, I can pass its own pid to the parent by using $$.

Is there any way to find the pid of a program that I launch from a script in

Answer 1

Use this: $! right after executing the command whose PID you want. It means, though that you need to use an ampersand (&) after the command, to start it in background. E.g.:

my_command & CMDPID=$!
echo "$CMDPID"

Answer 2

The variable $! has the PID of the last background process you started.