Process names

[Greg Hitchcock]

Hi

Can anyone help?

I need to enable a script (call it Script2) to find out the Name of the calling script (eg Script1).

I have an idea that the pid or ppid should help but do not know exactly how.

Any suggestions would be welcomed.

Greg Hitchcock

[Robin Wakefield]

Hi Greg,

How about:

ps -fp $$ | tail -1 | awk '{print $3}' | read PPID
ps -p $PPID | tail -1 | awk '{print $4}'

For a ksh, you don't need the 1st line, since there is a PPID variable created automatically, containing the parent process id.

Rgds, Robin.

[John Palmer]

Hi,

Korn/Posix shells will have the variable ${PPID} set to the parent process.

Given that, you can use ps to find the command and arguments of the parent process. Using the UNIX95 options of ps make it easier so to get the parent's command for instance:-

COMM=$(UNIX95= ps -p ${PPID} -o comm |tail -1)

Regards,
John

[Suhas_3]

Generally, it will be difficult to do so.

If there is a shell script script1 and you execute the script, the output of "ps -f" will give process name as "-ksh" or "sh", and not as "script1" as expected. So you can get the parent process-id, but in many cases it will be difficult to get the process name.

If the script "script1" is executed as "/bin/sh script1" (or similarly ksh or csh etc.) then "ps -f" will show the script name in last column. Then you can either use PPID variable or "$$" to get parent process-id and it's name.

[Wodisch]

Hello Greg,

how about a one-liner:

parent=$(UNIX95= ps -o comm -p $PPID)

HTH,
Wodisch