[Linux] killall by shell script

As the another example of using xargs, you can do the following if your linux box does not have killall.

$ ps ax | grep killme-process | awk '{print $1}' | xargs kill

The above command files the process, killme-process, and kills it.

The chain of pipelining is the following.

First, ps ax gives all the name of processes where the first column is the process ID.

Second, grep killme-process finds the processes with the name, killme-process.

Third, awk only prints the first column ($1) which is the process ID.

Fourth, xargs turns the list of process IDs as the input arguments of kill.

Finally, kill kills them.