shell script and child pid's

[Robert Brown]

In article <9101252007.AA06669 at karron.med.nyu.edu>, Dan
Karron at UCBVAX.BERKELEY.EDU writes:
|> 
|> How can I catch the pid of a spawned process from sh ?
|> 
|> I know that you can run ps and recover the child pid from the parent pid,
|> but if the shell is telling you the pid, why not pick it up and use it ?
|> ps won't be able to tell you which child pid is the one you want if you
|> spawn a number is like-named children.
|> 
|> There must be a simple trick out there !
|> Cheers!
|> 
|> dan.

The  built-in shell variable $! contains it:

$ sleep 60 &
1990
$ echo $!
1990
$

Bob Brown
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