kill - send a signal to a process or process group

- NAME
- SYNOPSIS
- DESCRIPTION

# NAME

kill - send a signal to a process or process group

# SYNOPSIS

kill SIGNAL, LIST

# DESCRIPTION

Sends a signal to a list of processes. Returns the number of processes successfully signaled (which is not necessarily the same as the number actually killed).

        $cnt = kill 1, $child1, $child2;
        kill 9, @goners;

If SIGNAL is zero, no signal is sent to the process. This is a useful way to check that a child process is alive and hasn't changed its UID. See the perlport manpage for notes on the portability of this construct.

Unlike in the shell, if SIGNAL is negative, it kills process groups instead of processes. (On System V, a negative PROCESS number will also kill process groups, but that's not portable.) That means you usually want to use positive not negative signals. You may also use a signal name in quotes.

See Signals in the perlipc manpage for more details.

kill - send a signal to a process or process group