This blog reformats and builds on top of this stackoverflow topic. Big thanks to rahmu and people contributed.
Problem
Let's say the command conky stopped responding on my desktop, and I want to kill it manually. I know a little bit of Unix, so I know that what I need to do is execute the command kill <PID>. In order to retrieve the PID, I can use ps or top or whatever tool my Unix distribution has given me. But how can I do this in one command?
Answer
ps aux | grep conky | grep -v grep | awk '{print $2}' | xargs kill
DISCLAIMER: This command only works in certain cases. Don't copy/paste it in your terminal and start using it, it could kill processes unsuspectingly. Rather learn how to build it.
How it works
ps aux
This command will output the list of running processes and some info about them. The interesting info is that it'll output the PID of each process in its 2nd column. Here's an extract from the output of the command on my box:
$ ps aux
rahmu 1925 0.0 0.1 129328 6112 ? S 11:55 0:06 tint2
rahmu 1931 0.0 0.3 154992 12108 ? S 11:55 0:00 volumeicon
rahmu 1933 0.1 0.2 134716 9460 ? S 11:55 0:24 parcellite
rahmu 1940 0.0 0.0 30416 3008 ? S 11:55 0:10 xcompmgr -cC -t-5 -l-5 -r4.2 -o.55 -D6
rahmu 1941 0.0 0.2 160336 8928 ? Ss 11:55 0:00 xfce4-power-manager
rahmu 1943 0.0 0.0 32792 1964 ? S 11:55 0:00 /usr/lib/xfconf/xfconfd
rahmu 1945 0.0 0.0 17584 1292 ? S 11:55 0:00 /usr/lib/gamin/gam_server
rahmu 1946 0.0 0.5 203016 19552 ? S 11:55 0:00 python /usr/bin/system-config-printer-applet
rahmu 1947 0.0 0.3 171840 12872 ? S 11:55 0:00 nm-applet --sm-disable
rahmu 1948 0.2 0.0 276000 3564 ? Sl 11:55 0:38 conky -q
grep conky
I'm only interested in one process, so I use grep to find the entry corresponding to my program conky.
$ ps aux | grep conky
rahmu 1948 0.2 0.0 276000 3564 ? Sl 11:55 0:39 conky -q
rahmu 3233 0.0 0.0 7592 840 pts/1 S+ 16:55 0:00 grep conky
grep -v grep
As you can see in step 2, the command ps outputs the grep conky process in its list (it's a running process after all). In order to filter it, I can run grep -v grep. The option-v tells grep to match all the lines excluding the ones containing the pattern.
$ ps aux | grep conky | grep -v grep
rahmu 1948 0.2 0.0 276000 3564 ? Sl 11:55 0:39 conky -q
awk '{print $2}'
Now that I have isolated my target process. I want to retrieve its PID. In other words I want to retrieve the 2nd word of the output. Lucky for me, most (all?) modern unices will provide some version of awk, a scripting language that does wonders with tabular data. Our task becomes as easy as print $2.
$ ps aux | grep conky | grep -v grep | awk '{print $2}'
1948
xargs kill
I have the PID. All I need is to pass it to kill. To do this, I will use xargs.
xargs kill will read from the input (in our case from the pipe), form a command consisting of kill <items> (<items> are whatever it read from the input), and then execute the command created. In our case it will execute kill 1948. Mission accomplished.
Final words
Note that depending on what version of unix you're using, certain programs may behave a little differently (for example, ps might output the PID in column $3). If something seems wrong or different, read your vendor's documentation (or better, the man pages). Also be careful as long pipes can be dangerous. Don't make any assumptions especially when using commands like kill or rm. For example, if there was another user named 'conky' (or 'Aconkyous') my command may kill all his running processes too!
Complement
actually you can simplify the pipeline further to
pkill conky
or
kill $(pgrep conky)