NAME

kill − terminate a process with extreme prejudice

SYNOPSIS

kill [ −sig ] 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, 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 (but beware: this works only if you use sh(1); not if you use 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 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. 

NEWS-OSRelease 4.2.1R