[ale] bash pid

[Ed Cashin]

You can use backgrounded processes and "wait" as shown below.
Otherwise, the process has exited before your script gets control again,
making the pid unusable.  Or I'm missing the point.  :)

In this example the alarm going off represents some condition like
the foreseen "probable kill needs".

me=$$
sh -c "sleep 5 && kill -USR1 $me" &  # alarm in 5 seconds
sleep 20 &
job=$!
trap "echo kill $job" USR1
wait $job || echo "aborted pid $job" 2>&1

-- 
  Ed Cashin <ecashin at noserose.net>
  http://noserose.net/e/
  http://www.coraid.com/