Killing the correct process

[Maarten Litmaath]

In article <5382 at buengc.BU.EDU>,
	bph at buengc.BU.EDU (Blair P. Houghton) writes:
)...
)>	kill $pid >/dev/null 2>&1
)
)At this point, and I'll admit it's a rare possibility, but
)not an impossibility, especially on multiprocessor machines,
)what happens if the $command (see below) has already exited
)and some other process (possibly on another processor) has 
)begun with the same pid?  [...]

Possible if your `$command' has been running for a *long* time and/or new
processes have come and gone like crazy in the meantime...  Normally it
takes a few days for the pid to wrap around; conventionally MAXPID is
30,000.  This value may have to be raised.

)... one of my least favorite problems is that of getting
)the status of a process I may not own without having to do
)
)	system("ps -l##### > /tmp/foo"); /* ##### is the pid */
)...

How about `fp = popen("ps -l#####", "r")'?
To check if a process is alive use `kill(pid, 0)'.
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