PIDOF(1)

💖 PIDOF(1) — the "where my girls at" command 💖

okay bestie, so you know that one command where you're like "who is running this program rn" and you need the actual process id? that's pidof(1), and she is the main character of the process-hunting world. she's a general commands manual page girly, and she ate, no cap.

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🌸 NAME 🌸

pidof — find the process ID of a running program 💅

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✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

pidof [-s] [-c] [-q] [-w] [-x] [-o omitpid[,...]] ... [-t] [-S
separator] program ...

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🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

So like, pidof finds the process id's (pids) of the named programs. that's it, that's the whole gig. she prints those id's straight to standard output, cute and simple, and honestly? obsessed. 🫶

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💜 OPTIONS 💜

• -s — single shot, babes. this tells the program to only return one pid. just one. not a whole crowd, just the one. ✨
• -c — only return process ids that are running with the same root directory. lowkey important: this option is ignored for non-root users, because they literally can't check the current root directory of processes they don't own. it's giving "not your business, bestie". 💀
• -q — quiet mode. suppress any output and only sets the exit status accordingly. she's silent but she's still judging you via exit codes. 🤫
• -w — show also processes that do not have a visible command line, like kernel worker threads. they're the invisible girlies of the process world. 👻
• -x — scripts too! this causes the program to also return process id's of shells running the named scripts. she's inclusive like that. 🎀
• -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. so you can literally be like "not my mom, please" and it understands. 😭
• -t — shows all thread ids instead of pids. threads are the pids' little sisters and they also deserve representation. 🧚
• -S separator — use separator as a separator put between pids. used only when more than one pids are printed for the program. oh and btw, the -d option is an alias for this option, for sysvinit pidof compatibility. legacy queen behavior. 👑
• -d — not listed on her own line but she's real and she's the alias for -S, for sysvinit pidof compatibility. iykyk. 🌈

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🔥 EXIT STATUS 🔥

1. 0 — at least one program was found with the requested name. slay, we found her. 💖
2. 1 — no program was found with the requested name. she's not here, bestie, go home. 😭

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💀 BUGS 💀

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. so yeah, she's not psychic, she's just reading /proc, and /proc is doing the most. not her fault fr fr. 🙈

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🌟 SEE ALSO 🌟

pgrep(1), pkill(1) — her cousins, her sisters, her whole friend group. go say hi. 💕

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🎀 AUTHOR 🎀

Jaromir Capik — the icon, the legend, the moment. thank you for your service. 🫡

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okay and that's the whole page, bestie!! this little gem lives in procps-ng, and she's dated 2023-01-16 — so go forth and pidof responsibly, mwah 💋✨🦋