How to kill multiple processes?

Question

Is there a way to kill multiple processes? e.g.

kill -9 49855 49856

I have tried using commands like pkill but they require a single pattern and do not allow multiple pid inputs.

Does this answer your question? Killing several processes In fact, it didn't mention killall, so added that there. Nor indeed does it mention @steeldriver's insight below. — zwets, Jul 28 '21 at 23:40

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Jul 28 '21 at 23:34

The bash shell's builtin kill appears to accept only a single PID (or jobspec). However the external kill command (from package procps) accepts multiple pids:

$ sleep 60 & sleep 60 &
[1] 25208
[2] 25209
$ /bin/kill 25208 25209
[1]-  Terminated              sleep 60
[2]+  Terminated              sleep 60

How to kill multiple processes?

1 Answers1