PIDOF(1) General Commands Manual PIDOF(1)

# [NAME](#NAME)

pidof - find the process ID of a running program

# [SYNOPSIS](#SYNOPSIS)

**pidof** \[**-s**] \[**-c**] \[**-q**] \[**-w**] \[**-x**] \[**-o** *omitpid*\[,...]] ... \[**-t**] \[**-S** *separator*] *program* ...

# [DESCRIPTION](#DESCRIPTION)

**Pidof** finds the process id's (pids) of the named programs. It prints those id's on the standard output.

# [OPTIONS](#OPTIONS)

[**-s**](#s)

Single shot - this instructs the program to only return one *pid*.

[**-c**](#c)

Only return process ids that are running with the same root directory. This option is ignored for non-root users, as they will be unable to check the current root directory of processes they do not own.

[**-q**](#q)

Quiet mode, suppress any output and only sets the exit status accordingly.

[**-w**](#w)

Show also processes that do not have visible command line (e.g. kernel worker threads).

[**-x**](#x)

Scripts too - this causes the program to also return process id's of shells running the named scripts.

[**-o** *omitpid*](#o)

Tells **pidof** to omit processes with that process id. The special pid **%PPID** can be used to name the parent process of the **pidof** program, in other words the calling shell or shell script.

[**-t**](#t)

Shows all thread ids instead of pids.

[**-S** *separator*](#S)

Use *separator* as a separator put between pids. Used only when more than one pids are printed for the program. The **-d** option is an alias for this option for sysvinit **pidof** compatibility.

# [EXIT STATUS](#EXIT_STATUS)

**0**

At least one program was found with the requested name.

**1**

No program was found with the requested name.

# [BUGS](#BUGS)

When using the **-x** option, **pidof** only has a simple method for detecting scripts and will miss scripts that, for example, use env. This limitation is due to how the scripts look in the proc filesystem.

# [SEE ALSO](#SEE_ALSO)

[**pgrep**(1)](/man/os/procps/pgrep.1), [**pkill**(1)](/man/os/procps/pkill.1)

# [AUTHOR](#AUTHOR)

[Jaromir Capik](mailto:jcapik@redhat.com)

2023-01-16 procps-ng

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Document: pidof(1) from procps 4.0.7-r2 (Chainguard OS)
Source: https://downloads.sourceforge.net/project/procps-ng/Production/procps-ng-4.0.7.tar.xz