Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!decwrl!sgi!shinobu!odin!lavalite.asd.sgi.com!rlb
From: rlb@lavalite.asd.sgi.com (Robert Brown)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.sgi
Subject: Re: shell script and child pid's
Message-ID: <1991Jan26.161528.26723@odin.corp.sgi.com>
Date: 26 Jan 91 16:15:28 GMT
References: <9101252007.AA06669@karron.med.nyu.edu>
Sender: news@odin.corp.sgi.com (Net News)
Reply-To: rlb@lavalite.asd.sgi.com (Robert Brown)
Organization: Silicon Graphics, Inc., Mountain View, CA.
Lines: 26

In article <9101252007.AA06669@karron.med.nyu.edu>, Dan
Karron@UCBVAX.BERKELEY.EDU writes:
|> 
|> How can I catch the pid of a spawned process from sh ?
|> 
|> I know that you can run ps and recover the child pid from the parent pid,
|> but if the shell is telling you the pid, why not pick it up and use it ?
|> ps won't be able to tell you which child pid is the one you want if you
|> spawn a number is like-named children.
|> 
|> There must be a simple trick out there !
|> Cheers!
|> 
|> dan.

The  built-in shell variable $! contains it:

$ sleep 60 &
1990
$ echo $!
1990
$

Bob Brown
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