kill: Send a signal to one or more processes.
In warnes/fork: R Functions for Handling Multiple Processes

Description Usage Arguments Details Value Author(s) References See Also Examples

kill sends a signal to a process. killall sends a signal to all processes forked during the current session.

1 2	kill(pid, signal = 15) killall(signal = 15)

`pid`	Process ID for the target process
`signal`	Signal number to send. Defaults to 9 (SIGKILL)

The kill function provides a thin wrapper around the Unix "kill" system call, which sends a signal to the specified process. The killall function sends a signal to all processes which have been forked during the current session.

Refer to the local Unix man pages for details.

kill returns 0 on successful completion, -1 on errors. killall does not return a value.

Gregory R. Warnes greg@warnes.net

"kill" and "waitpid" man pages

getpid, exit, wait, kill, killall

   # start a process that just sleeps for 10 seconds
    sleepy <- function() 
     {
       cat("Going to sleep..")
       Sys.sleep(10)
       cat("Woke up!")
     }
   pid <- fork( sleepy )

   # kill the sleeping process
   kill(pid)