How to kill all processes returned by pgrep

Question

I need to kill a few Python processes. I can get a list of the process numbers using pgrep python, but how can I kill them all at once instead of killing one by one?

I'm looking for something like:

pgrep python | kill process_nos

Solution 1

You can try:

pgrep python | xargs kill

Solution 2

pkill python

Short and sweet, man pkill for details.

Solution 3

If pkill is a bit too radical for your tastes and you prefer to select which entries of the pgrep listing you want to kill, you can have a look at ezkill <https://github.com/Kraymer/ezkill> that i wrote.

Solution 4

@tink has the correct answer, but I wanted to add that you want to make sure you are using the correct format for your machine. If you are using a Linux machine, pkill python is correct, but if you are using a Mac terminal, you will want to use pkill Python. So the most correct answer would be this:

pkill <process_name>

where <process_name> is the case-sensitive name of the process to kill.

Note: I understand that the tags for this question were related to Ubuntu Linux, but I wanted to clarify this for anyone that has a different machine but had this exact question (like myself).

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Comments

[tink]

Why would you invoke THREE processes when one suffices?

[Vadim Kirilchuk]

For one process it would be kill $(pgrep name)

[vog]

No, "kill $(pgrep name)" is still two processes and a shell. For one process, use pkill (as pointed out by @tink: superuser.com/a/742741)

[Jeppe]

I found that pkill python does not always work, in cases where kill PID neither works. But pgrep python | xargs kill -9 does. Can pkill do the equivalent?

[tink]

Absolutely ... pkill -9 <...>

[tink]

Bare in mind that it the process is stuck on e.g. broken I/O that, too, may not work. But in those cases only a reboot will ...