On Tue, Oct 22, 2013 at 02:34, Alexander Hall wrote: > On 10/22/13 02:09, Ted Unangst wrote: >> I don't think the -l flag to pkill is useful. It's behavior is oddly >> different from pgrep -l (and more different with pgrep/pkill -f). Or >> rather, it's not just long output, but also turns on verbose mode when >> otherwise nothing would be printed. The only use case I can think of >> is "did I kill the right process?" which is literally the kind of shoot >> first, ask questions later behavior we should maybe not encourage. > > I tend to pgrep -fl for a process to kill, and then I always have to > think about which switch to remove. Being as tightly coupled as they > are, I think allowing -l for both is helpful. > > I agree the output is inconstistant, but I'd rather have that fixed (if > possible) than it being removed. > > > $ sleep 50 & > [1] 2673 > $ pgrep -fl sleep > 25664 sleep 5 > 2673 sleep 50 > $ pgrep -fl 'sleep 50' > 2673 sleep 50 > $ pkill -l 'sleep 50' > $ pgrep -fl 'sleep 50' > 2673 sleep 50 > $ #fuck > $ pkill -f 'sleep 50' > [1] + Terminated sleep 50
This is exactly the problem I experience. I didn't want to rely solely on "I can't remember which flag to use", but yes, that is the root of the problem. Removing support for -l causes it to be a hard error, that one will notice, as opposed to a silent failure.
