Shell command for the normal program termination of Skype from the command line

Question

Would the following be the right way to do it in your opinion? Can you suggest a better alternative or, if not, is there something that can be done to make the existing version better?

ps -e | grep skype | cut -d" " -f1 | xargs kill -s term

• chicks: I would install Linux-style killall to take care of this.
• 200_success: @chicks In Linux, /usr/bin/pkill is in the same procps package as /bin/ps, but /usr/bin/killall is in a separate psmisc package. Also, fun fact: on Solaris, killall actually tries to kill everything that it possibly can, regardless of command-line parameters! For both reasons, I recommend pkill over killall.

Answer 1

As the comments have pointed out, there exist tools to match processes by name. This is roughly equivalent (better than) what you're trying to do:

pkill skype

It's better because:

1. It's shorter and cleaner
2. It won't kill itself

By the second point I mean that ps -e | grep skype will match the grep process itself too. That won't happen when using pkill.

Code review

If we wanted to imitate pkill, I would suggest writing like this:

ps -e | awk '/[s]kype/ { print 1ドル }' | xargs kill

That is:

• Replace two processes with one (grep + cut with awk)
• Use [s]kype instead of skype is a common trick to make the awk itself not match
• Drop -s term from kill, as TERM is the default signal anyway