[talk] kill -0

[Pete Wright]

On 2019-05-10 11:00, Raul Cuza wrote:
> Hola People Who Use Shells,
>
> I just had someone submit a shell script using `kill -0 ${PID}` to
> test if a process is running. It exits non-zero if ${PID} isn't a
> running process and zero otherwise. But...
>
> http://nixdoc.net/man-pages/FreeBSD/kill.1.html says nothing about it.
>
> The ubuntu man page mentions it poorly with "Particularly useful
> signals include HUP, INT, KILL, STOP, CONT, and 0." Looking at `kill
> --list` there is no signal 0.
>
> And stackoverflow says
> https://stackoverflow.com/questions/11012527/what-does-kill-0-pid-in-a-shell-script-do
> matching what the person who submitted the PR says.
>
> Am I wrong to think this should be accomplished in a way with better
> documentation? I feel like I am nit picking.

this seems like a bash'ism - from the bash manpage:

SIGNALS
        When bash is interactive, in the absence of any traps, it ignores
        SIGTERM (so that kill 0 does not kill an interactive shell), and 
SIGINT
        is caught and handled (so that the wait builtin is 
interruptible).  In
        all cases, bash ignores SIGQUIT.  If job control is in effect, bash
        ignores SIGTTIN, SIGTTOU, and SIGTSTP.




-p

-- 
Pete Wright
pete at nomadlogic.org
@nomadlogicLA