Kill All Matching Processes with grep

ps aux | grep python | awk '{print $2}' | xargs kill -9

Shared by Kim Ji-seong from Naver Boostcamp AI Tech 2nd cohort.

• The pipe ( | ) passes the output of the preceding command to the next.
• ps aux retrieves information about all running processes.
• grep python filters for lines containing “python”.
• awk '{print $2}' extracts only the second column, which is the PID.
  • awk blog
  • awk can select fields and records.
  • Here it prints the content of the 2nd field.
• xargs kill -9 kills all the extracted PIDs.
  • xargs blog
  • xargs uses piped input as arguments for the given command.
  • The awk output becomes the arguments for kill -9.