Displays linux tasks in a hierarchical mode

ps -e -o pid,args --forest

Create a command that will return the pid of the given command string..

#!/bin/sh
ps aux|grep $1|head -n1|awk '{print $2}'

A better way to get the process id of an application. I recommend giving an alias for this command…

ps aux|grep firefox|awk '{print $2 "\t\t" $12}'|head -n1

Replace firefox with the name of the application you are searching for.

[tags]linux,command,cli,awk,ps,process,id,grep[/tags]