NAME

kill − Send a signal to a process or group

SYNOPSIS

kill [options] pid pid ...

OPTIONS

−gTreat each pid as the name of a process group rather than a process, and send the given signal to the entire group. 

−helpPrint a summary of the command-line options and exit without sending any signals. 

−lPrint out a list of valid signal names and exit without sending any signals. 

−signalSend signal to the given processes.  Signal may be either a number or a symbolic name.  The legal names are the same as the names from the <signal.h> include file, except without the “SIG” prefix.  Signal defaults to TERM. 
 

DESCRIPTION

This command sends a signal (usually a SIGTERM kill signal) to one or more processes.  Depending on how the processes have arranged for the signal to be handled, the processes may exit, enter the debugger, ignore the signal altogether, or execute a handler procedure within the process.  In the default case where the SIGTERM signal is used, the normal result is for the process to exit.  See the sigvec manual page for more details on signal handling. 

Note:  The C-shell (csh) contains a built-in command kill that behaves almost identically to this command (it doesn’t support the −g or −help options, but is otherwise the same).  If you are running the C-shell and type kill, you will get the built-in command:  to get the program version, invoke kill by typing its absolute path name. 
 

SEE ALSO

sigvec
 

KEYWORDS

group, kill, process, signal

Sprite version 1.0  —  December 30, 1988