How to extract the PID from 'ps -ef'

Shell Programming and Scripting
1

Hi

I am writing a shell script in ksh where I have to grep for a process name , say XYZ from "ps -ef" and then extract it's PID.

ps -ef | grep XYZ gives -
" int 7738 25734 1 02:00:49 pts/tc 0:00 grep XYZ"

I am thinking of replacing one or more occurrences of the space with pipe "|", so the output will be -
|int|7738|25734|1|02:00:49|pts/tc|0:00|grep|XYZ

Then I want to use the "cut -d"|" -f3 which will give 7738, the PID.

But I am not able to replace one or more occurrences of the space with a single pipe. I have tried in many many different ways, but I am in vain.

Can you please show me the way how it can be done ?

Thanking you in advance ...
Nirmalya

2

do this:

ps -ef | grep XYZ | awk '{ print $2 }'

replace XYZ withwhatever you have

3

Hi Yogesh

Thanks a lot man. I should also try 'awk' - my mistake.

Thanks
Nirmalya

4

tr command should help you to squeeze characters.
Try tr -s option.

5

To replace spaces with pipe :

ps -ef | grep XYZ | sed 's/  */|/g'

I suggest you to use awk solution posted by Yogesh Sawant.

Your command will always returns the grep process, to avoid that you can use the following grep syntax :

ps -ef | grep [X]YZ

Jean-Pierre.

6

Am not sure, how would suppressing characters and that too which are repeated would prove to be helpful? Could you please explain that

7

how about this,

ps -ef | awk ' /XYZ/ { print $2 }'
8

better, that reduces one pipe