NAME

kill − terminate a process with extreme prejudice

SYNOPSIS

kill [ −signal ] processid ... 
kill −l

DESCRIPTION

Kill sends the TERM (terminate, 15) signal to the specified processes.  If a signal name or number preceded by ‘−’ is given as first argument, that signal is sent instead of terminate (see sigvec(2)).  The signal names are listed by ‘kill −l’, and are as given in /usr/include/signal.h, but stripped of the common SIG prefix. 

The terminate signal will kill processes that do not catch the signal; ‘kill −9 ...’ is a sure kill, as the KILL (9) signal cannot be caught.  By convention, if process number 0 is specified, all members in the process group (i.e. processes resulting from the current login) are signaled.   (Note that this works only with sh(1), not with csh(1).)  Negative process numbers also have special meanings; see kill(2) for details. 

The killed processes must belong to the current user unless he or she is the super-user. 

The process number of an asynchronous process started with ‘&’ is reported by the shell.  Process numbers can also be found by using ps(1). 

Kill is a built-in to csh(1).  It allows job specifiers of the form “%...” as arguments so process id’s are not as often used as kill arguments.  See csh(1) for details. 

SEE ALSO

csh(1), ps(1), kill(2), sigvec(2)

BUGS

A replacement for “kill 0” for csh(1) users should be provided. 

4th Berkeley Distribution  —  April 20, 1986