What's the difference between kill and killall

Question

The difference between kill and killall

I tried kill command as

$ kill "PDF Expert"
-bash: kill: PDF Expert: arguments must be process or job IDs

It report error,
However, when test with

$ killall "PDF Expert"

The application "PDF Expert" was closed.

What's the difference between them?

Do you think that this answer is a satisfactory explanation of the difference between kill and killall: https://askubuntu.com/questions/271028/killall-doesnt-kill-all-and-rarely-kills-what-is-the-command-for-then/271032#271032? — karel, Apr 08 '18 at 16:37
Is the answer not already present in the question? arguments must be process or job IDs — TRiG, Apr 08 '18 at 16:38
kill will terminate a single process, killall , as the name implies, will kill all processes of the name given. See https://linuxconfig.org/kill-vs-killall-difference-and-command-usage for details. — Panther, Apr 08 '18 at 17:11
Have you tried reading the documentation? man kill and man killall — glenn jackman, Apr 08 '18 at 19:32

score 2 · Answer 1 · edited Nov 03 '23 at 16:42

2

kill works by process ID but killall can determine the process ID by process name. If you give the process name instead of the process ID, killall might find the process ID and kill it.

edited Nov 03 '23 at 16:42

Milan

172

answered Apr 08 '18 at 18:05

YaserMow

184

What's the difference between kill and killall

1 Answers1