killing a process in one line

Question

Sometimes I need to end a process quickly via terminal but it is tedious to just type ps -e | grep firefox and then kill all the time. I want to create an alias in my .bashrc and just type in killfirefox

I guess this would do it but I don't really understand everything.

so I've learn that either ps -e | grep firefox | sudo awk '{print $1}' or pgrep firefox will return the pid of firefox which I need to kill a process. I thought this would do the job :

pgrep firefox | sudo awk '{kill $1}' but it doesn't work. It says nothing and firefox is still running. I then tried pgrep firefox | sudo awk '{system(sudo kill $1)}' but then it returns "sh: 1: 27762: not found".

Why doesn't my way work? What's wrong?

Answer 1

To have your way works you have to fix the awk syntax and use the system function to execute commands in awk:

pgrep firefox | awk '{system("kill "$1)}'

Then you have your own-made (wheel reinvented) equivalent of:

pkill firefox

as pointed out in your question comments.

Answer 2

For applications like Firefox, I just use killall firefox.

man killall

Answer 3

can you try creating an alias of this

ps -U root -u root | grep "$2" | sudo awk '{system ("sudo kill "$2)}'