[linux] Linux/Unix command to determine if process is running?

This prints the number of processes whose basename is "chromium-browser":

ps -e -o args= | awk 'BEGIN{c=0}{
 if(!match($1,/^\[.*\]$/)){sub(".*/","",$1)} # Do not strip process names enclosed by square brackets.
 if($1==cmd){c++}
}END{print c}' cmd="chromium-browser"

If this prints "0", the process is not running. The command assumes process path does not contain breaking space. I have not tested this with suspended processes or zombie processes.

Tested using gwak as the awk alternative in Linux.

Here is a more versatile solution with some example usage:

#!/bin/sh
isProcessRunning() {
if [ "${1-}" = "-q" ]; then
 local quiet=1;
 shift
else
 local quiet=0;
fi
ps -e -o pid,args= | awk 'BEGIN{status=1}{
 name=$2
 if(name !~ /^\[.*\]$/){sub(".*/","",name)} # strip dirname, if process name is not enclosed by square brackets.
 if(name==cmd){status=0; if(q){exit}else{print $0}}
}END{exit status}' cmd="$1" q=$quiet
}

process='chromium-browser'

printf "Process \"${process}\" is "
if isProcessRunning -q "$process" 
 then printf "running.\n"
 else printf "not running.\n"; fi

printf "Listing of matching processes (PID and process name with command line arguments):\n"
isProcessRunning "$process"

Examples related to linux

grep's at sign caught as whitespace How to prevent Google Colab from disconnecting? "E: Unable to locate package python-pip" on Ubuntu 18.04 How to upgrade Python version to 3.7? Install Qt on Ubuntu Get first line of a shell command's output Cannot connect to the Docker daemon at unix:/var/run/docker.sock. Is the docker daemon running? Run bash command on jenkins pipeline How to uninstall an older PHP version from centOS7 How to update-alternatives to Python 3 without breaking apt?

Examples related to bash

Comparing a variable with a string python not working when redirecting from bash script Zipping a file in bash fails How do I prevent Conda from activating the base environment by default? Get first line of a shell command's output Fixing a systemd service 203/EXEC failure (no such file or directory) /bin/sh: apt-get: not found VSCode Change Default Terminal Run bash command on jenkins pipeline How to check if the docker engine and a docker container are running? How to switch Python versions in Terminal?

Examples related to shell

Comparing a variable with a string python not working when redirecting from bash script Get first line of a shell command's output How to run shell script file using nodejs? Run bash command on jenkins pipeline Way to create multiline comments in Bash? How to do multiline shell script in Ansible How to check if a file exists in a shell script How to check if an environment variable exists and get its value? Curl to return http status code along with the response docker entrypoint running bash script gets "permission denied"

Examples related to unix

Docker CE on RHEL - Requires: container-selinux >= 2.9 What does `set -x` do? How to find files modified in last x minutes (find -mmin does not work as expected) sudo: npm: command not found How to sort a file in-place How to read a .properties file which contains keys that have a period character using Shell script gpg decryption fails with no secret key error Loop through a comma-separated shell variable Best way to find os name and version in Unix/Linux platform Resource u'tokenizers/punkt/english.pickle' not found

Examples related to process

Fork() function in C How to kill a nodejs process in Linux? Xcode process launch failed: Security Understanding PrimeFaces process/update and JSF f:ajax execute/render attributes Linux Script to check if process is running and act on the result CreateProcess error=2, The system cannot find the file specified How to make parent wait for all child processes to finish? How to use [DllImport("")] in C#? Visual Studio "Could not copy" .... during build How to terminate process from Python using pid?