How to tell if a process has ended?

Question

Besides using top, is there a more precise way of identifying if the last executed command has finished if I had to check in a separate session over Putty?

Answer 1

pgrep

Answer 2

How about getting it to run another command immediately after that sets a flag.

$ do_command ; touch I_FINISHED

then when the command finishes it'll create a file called I_FINISHED that you can look for.

or something more sophisticated that writes to a log file if you're doing it multiple times.

Answer 3

I agree that it may be a faster option in the long run to have your program write to a log file or create a notification. Just put it at the end of the executed code, past the part that you suspect may cause it to hang.

Answer 4

ps -eo cmd

Lists all processes, and displays the command line, as 'typed' when the command started, so you will be able to tell your script apart from anything else running written in Perl.