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  • Do we talk about Linux? Or UNIX? Commented May 16, 2022 at 17:27
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    pkill has no -l option, so you're just looking at the standard help message. Commented May 16, 2022 at 17:28
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    On the contrary, it's common for a command when it is given an argument it does not know to either say "what?" or to act as though it was invoked with --help or its equivelant. Giving possible options for one specific argument in response to an unknown argument would be a very odd design decision in my opinion. Commented May 16, 2022 at 17:45
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    Well, pkill -l (at least on my Arch) does something completely different. You should always read the man page before trying random options. Commented May 16, 2022 at 17:46
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    Just to complicate things further: Bash has a built-in kill command, so it does not even run the command /bin/kill which the man page describes: it is instead described in the Bash Reference Manual, and judging by your output, you are running that. It also accepts signal names with or without the SIG prefix. Other shells may also have built-ins, or not (you don't tag which specific shell you are using). Commented May 16, 2022 at 22:31