I use Bash as my interactive shell and I was wondering if there was an easy way to get Bash to run a system command instead of a shell builtin command in the case where they both share the same name.

For example, use the system kill (from util-linux) to print the process id (pid) of the named process(es) instead of sending a signal:

$ /bin/kill -p httpd
2617
...

Without specifying the full path of the system command, the Bash builtin is used instead of the system command. The kill builtin doesn’t have the -p option so the command fails:

$ kill -p httpd
bash: kill: p: invalid signal specification

I tried the answers listed in Make bash use external `time` command rather than shell built-in but most of them only work because time is actually a shell keyword – not a shell builtin.

Other than temporarily disabling the Bash builtin with enable -n kill, the best solution I’ve seen so far is to use:

$(which kill) -p httpd

Are there other easier (involve less typing) ways to execute an external command instead of a shell builtin?

Note that kill is just an example and I’d like a generalised solution similar to the way that prefixing with the command builtin prevents functions which have the same name as an external command from being run. In most cases, I usually prefer to use the builtin version as it saves forking a new process and some times the builtin has features that the external command doesn’t.