kill

Structure: kill [options] IDs

kill ends one or more process IDs. In order to do this you must own the process or be designated a privileged user. To find the process ID of a certain job use ps.

There are different levels of intensity to the kill command, and these can be represented either numerically or symbolically. kill -1 or HUP makes a request to the server to terminate the process, while kill -9 or kill KILL forces a process to terminate absolutely. Most polite Unix users will attempt to kill a process using -1 first before forcing a process to die.

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