pidof -- find the process ID of a running program.
Synopsis
pidof [-s] [-c] [-x] [-o omitpid[,omitpid..]] [-o omitpid[,omitpid..]..] [-S separator] program [program..]
Description
Pidof finds the process id's (pids) of the named programs. It prints those id's on the standard output.
Options
- -s
Single shot - this instructs the program to only return one pid.
- -c
Only return process ids that are running with the same root directory. This option is ignored for non-root users, as they will be unable to check the current root directory of processes they do not own.
- -x
Scripts too - this causes the program to also return process id's of shells running the named scripts.
- -o omitpid
Tells pidof to omit processes with that process id. The special pid %PPID can be used to name the parent process of the pidof program, in other words the calling shell or shell script.
- -S separator
Use separator as a separator put between pids. Used only when more than one pids are printed for the program.
Exit Status
- 0
At least one program was found with the requested name.
- 1
No program was found with the requested name.
Bugs
When using the -x option, pidof only has a simple method for detecting scripts and will miss scripts that, for example, use env. This limitation is due to how the scripts look in the proc filesystem.