Getting pids from ps -ef |grep keyword
I want to use ps -ef | grep "keyword" to determine the pid of a daemon process (there is a unique string in output of ps -ef in it).
I can kill the process with pkill keyword is there any command that returns the pid instead of killing it? (pidof or pgrep doesnt work)
Answer
You can use pgrep as long as you include the -f options. That makes pgrep match keywords in the whole command (including arguments) instead of just the process name.
pgrep -f keyword
From the man page:
-fThe pattern is normally only matched against the process name. When-fis set, the full command line is used.
If you really want to avoid pgrep, try:
ps -ef | awk '/[k]eyword/{print $2}'
Note the [] around the first letter of the keyword. That's a useful trick to avoid matching the awk command itself.