Re: being able to get results of shell command

[Dominic Amann <dominic lbs ca>]

Rohan Nicholls wrote:

> I am trying to figure out how to find out if a program is already
> running before starting it up.  I start a number of programs from my
> .sawfishrc and on a restart of sawfish I don't want to start them up
> again.
>
> Is there someway to tell if the new start is the result of a restart or
> not?
>
> Is there a way to get the results back from something like a call to:
>
> ps -A|grep -i <process name>
>
> Or a way to see the system processes as opposed to only the ones
> controlled by sawfish.
>
> I have been reading the process section of info, but have not completely
> got my head around how to put this to practical use.
>
> Thanks for any help.
>
> rohan
>  
You can use $? for the PID of the last executed foreground command, and 
$! for the last background command, so something like

$ command &
$ command_pid=$!

will capture the PID of the command. If you save these to file, then you 
can see whether the command is still running. There is a function in the 
init scripts that works just like this on most systems.

--
Dominic Amann, Linux Based Solutions Ltd., <http://www.lbs.ca/>
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