[X-Unix] Command to find if a certain app is running?

[Juan Manuel Palacios]

On Mar 27, 2009, at 9:54 AM, TjL wrote:

> On Fri, Mar 27, 2009 at 2:58 AM, Christoph Hammann  
> <chammann at mac.com> wrote:
>> The first command you're looking for is ps aux | grep processname .  
>> The
>> second is apropos .
>>
>
> It is often a good idea to throw out 'grep' in the responses for grep
> (and, the 'w' as someone else mentioned)
>
> ps auxwwwww | grep iTunes | grep -v grep


	There's an alternative to this filtering technique (note that purpose  
of the backlash in front of my ps command is only to temporarily turn  
off the shell alias I have setup for it, as outlined in my previous  
reply to this thread):

$[jmpp @jmpp: Documents](38/0 0,0) -> \ps -A | grep -i itunes
   291 ??         0:01.03 /Applications/iTunes.app/Contents/Resources/ 
iTunesHelper.app/Contents/MacOS/iTunesHelper -psn_0_86037
   300 ??         3:04.85 /Library/PreferencePanes/ 
SizzlingKeys.prefPane/Contents/Resources/SizzlingKeys4iTunes.app/ 
Contents/MacOS/SizzlingKeys4iTunes -psn_0_110619
   302 ??        77:54.21 /Applications/iTunes.app/Contents/MacOS/ 
iTunes -psn_0_114716
21769 ttys005    0:00.00 grep -i itunes

	Now we pipe to a second grep to filter the grep result itself:

$[jmpp @jmpp: Documents](39/0 0,0) -> \ps -A | grep -i itunes | grep - 
v grep
   291 ??         0:01.03 /Applications/iTunes.app/Contents/Resources/ 
iTunesHelper.app/Contents/MacOS/iTunesHelper -psn_0_86037
   300 ??         3:04.85 /Library/PreferencePanes/ 
SizzlingKeys.prefPane/Contents/Resources/SizzlingKeys4iTunes.app/ 
Contents/MacOS/SizzlingKeys4iTunes -psn_0_110619
   302 ??        77:54.27 /Applications/iTunes.app/Contents/MacOS/ 
iTunes -psn_0_114716

	But there is a pretty cool way to do it in just a single pipe-to-grep  
operation:

$[jmpp @jmpp: Documents](40/0 0 0,0) -> \ps -A | grep -i [i]tunes
   291 ??         0:01.03 /Applications/iTunes.app/Contents/Resources/ 
iTunesHelper.app/Contents/MacOS/iTunesHelper -psn_0_86037
   300 ??         3:04.85 /Library/PreferencePanes/ 
SizzlingKeys.prefPane/Contents/Resources/SizzlingKeys4iTunes.app/ 
Contents/MacOS/SizzlingKeys4iTunes -psn_0_110619
   302 ??        77:54.33 /Applications/iTunes.app/Contents/MacOS/ 
iTunes -psn_0_114716

	I can't really remember the regular expression fu that takes place  
with the brackets surrounding the first letter of the search pattern  
(I do remember that it's more complicated that I'd originally thought  
when I first read on it), but in any case it does take care of  
filtering the grep command from the ps output since it doesn't match  
the pattern. The -i in the now-one-and-only grep filter only buys us  
case-insensitive matching, so as to be able to type itunes rather than  
iTunes.

	HTH!

-jmpp