pidof − find the process ID of a running program
pidof [−s] [−c] [−q] [−w] [−x] [−o omitpid[,omitpid...]...] [−t] [−S separator] program [program...]
Pidof finds the process id’s (pids) of the named programs. It prints those id’s on the standard output.
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−s |
Single shot - this instructs the program to only return one pid. | ||
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−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. | ||
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−q |
Quiet mode, suppress any output and only sets the exit status accordingly. | ||
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−w |
Show also processes that do not have visible command line (e.g. kernel worker threads). | ||
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−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.
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−t |
Shows all thread ids instead of pids. |
-S separator
Use separator as a separator put between pids. Used only when more than one pids are printed for the program. The −d option is an alias for this option for sysvinit pidof compatibility.
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0 |
At least one program was found with the requested name. |
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1 |
No program was found with the requested name. |
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.
pgrep(1), pkill(1)