| KILL(1P) | POSIX Programmer's Manual | KILL(1P) |
This manual page is part of the POSIX Programmer's Manual. The Linux implementation of this interface may differ (consult the corresponding Linux manual page for details of Linux behavior), or the interface may not be implemented on Linux.
kill — terminate or signal processes
kill -s signal_name pid...
kill -l [exit_status]
kill [-signal_name] pid...
kill [-signal_number] pid...
The kill utility shall send a signal to the process or processes specified by each pid operand.
For each pid operand, the kill utility shall perform actions equivalent to the kill() function defined in the System Interfaces volume of POSIX.1‐2017 called with the following arguments:
The kill utility shall conform to the Base Definitions volume of POSIX.1‐2017, Section 12.2, Utility Syntax Guidelines, except that in the last two SYNOPSIS forms, the -signal_number and -signal_name options are usually more than a single character.
The following options shall be supported:
The effects of specifying any signal_number other than those listed below are undefined.
If the first argument is a negative integer, it shall be interpreted as a -signal_number option, not as a negative pid operand specifying a process group.
The following operands shall be supported:
Not used.
None.
The following environment variables shall affect the execution of kill:
Default.
When the -l option is not specified, the standard output shall not be used.
When the -l option is specified, the symbolic name of each signal shall be written in the following format:
"%s%c", <signal_name>, <separator>
where the <signal_name> is in uppercase, without the SIG prefix, and the <separator> shall be either a <newline> or a <space>. For the last signal written, <separator> shall be a <newline>.
When both the -l option and exit_status operand are specified, the symbolic name of the corresponding signal shall be written in the following format:
"%s\n", <signal_name>
The standard error shall be used only for diagnostic messages.
None.
None.
The following exit values shall be returned:
Default.
The following sections are informative.
Process numbers can be found by using ps.
The job control job ID notation is not required to work as expected when kill is operating in its own utility execution environment. In either of the following examples:
nohup kill %1 &
system("kill %1");
the kill operates in a different environment and does not share the shell's understanding of job numbers.
Any of the commands:
kill -9 100 -165 kill -s kill 100 -165 kill -s KILL 100 -165
sends the SIGKILL signal to the process whose process ID is 100 and to all processes whose process group ID is 165, assuming the sending process has permission to send that signal to the specified processes, and that they exist.
The System Interfaces volume of POSIX.1‐2017 and this volume of POSIX.1‐2017 do not require specific signal numbers for any signal_names. Even the -signal_number option provides symbolic (although numeric) names for signals. If a process is terminated by a signal, its exit status indicates the signal that killed it, but the exact values are not specified. The kill -l option, however, can be used to map decimal signal numbers and exit status values into the name of a signal. The following example reports the status of a terminated job:
job stat=$? if [ $stat -eq 0 ] then
echo job completed successfully. elif [ $stat -gt 128 ] then
echo job terminated by signal SIG$(kill -l $stat). else
echo job terminated with error code $stat. fi
To send the default signal to a process group (say 123), an application should use a command similar to one of the following:
kill -TERM -123 kill -- -123
The -l option originated from the C shell, and is also implemented in the KornShell. The C shell output can consist of multiple output lines because the signal names do not always fit on a single line on some terminal screens. The KornShell output also included the implementation-defined signal numbers and was considered by the standard developers to be too difficult for scripts to parse conveniently. The specified output format is intended not only to accommodate the historical C shell output, but also to permit an entirely vertical or entirely horizontal listing on systems for which this is appropriate.
An early proposal invented the name SIGNULL as a signal_name for signal 0 (used by the System Interfaces volume of POSIX.1‐2017 to test for the existence of a process without sending it a signal). Since the signal_name 0 can be used in this case unambiguously, SIGNULL has been removed.
An early proposal also required symbolic signal_names to be recognized with or without the SIG prefix. Historical versions of kill have not written the SIG prefix for the -l option and have not recognized the SIG prefix on signal_names. Since neither applications portability nor ease-of-use would be improved by requiring this extension, it is no longer required.
To avoid an ambiguity of an initial negative number argument specifying either a signal number or a process group, POSIX.1‐2008 mandates that it is always considered the former by implementations that support the XSI option. It also requires that conforming applications always use the "--" options terminator argument when specifying a process group, unless an option is also specified.
The -s option was added in response to international interest in providing some form of kill that meets the Utility Syntax Guidelines.
The job control job ID notation is not required to work as expected when kill is operating in its own utility execution environment. In either of the following examples:
nohup kill %1 &
system("kill %1");
the kill operates in a different environment and does not understand how the shell has managed its job numbers.
None.
Chapter 2, Shell Command Language, ps, wait
The Base Definitions volume of POSIX.1‐2017, Section 3.204, Job Control Job ID, Chapter 8, Environment Variables, Section 12.2, Utility Syntax Guidelines, <signal.h>
The System Interfaces volume of POSIX.1‐2017, kill()
Portions of this text are reprinted and reproduced in electronic form from IEEE Std 1003.1-2017, Standard for Information Technology -- Portable Operating System Interface (POSIX), The Open Group Base Specifications Issue 7, 2018 Edition, Copyright (C) 2018 by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc and The Open Group. In the event of any discrepancy between this version and the original IEEE and The Open Group Standard, the original IEEE and The Open Group Standard is the referee document. The original Standard can be obtained online at http://www.opengroup.org/unix/online.html .
Any typographical or formatting errors that appear in this page are most likely to have been introduced during the conversion of the source files to man page format. To report such errors, see https://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/reporting_bugs.html .
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