Re: killall again

["Adam N. Thompson, MCNE, MCSE" <athompso@commerced.com>]

Steve Mynott wrote:
> > Is there a consensus? Since this port does all the things that people
> > seem to want, should I make "killall" be an alias for zap? Would it
> > make sense to rename the port, since killall seems to be a better-known
> > name than zap?
> 
> I would suggest keeping it as zap.  killall is purely a linuxism.
> 
> solaris killall kills _all_ processes, which is a trap many linux
> users have fallen into.


The linux killall is taken directly from IRIX, fwiw.  Historical
documentation indicates the IRIX syntax was brought over to Linux before
anyone involved (at the time) knew of the Solaris killall command.

Killall has been part of IRIX since at least (approx) v5.1, which would
place it around 1989 (??).  I remember stumbling upon it in Linux around
v0.11, which was roughly 1992.  SGI added it to IRIX as a way to make
their (SysV-style) init scripts a bit tidier.  If memory serves me, Alan
Cox suggested (or agreed) that it be implemented in his 'boot/root'
distribution for the very same reason.  Of course, since then, it's been
reimplemented as a bourne shell function because not all Linuxes(sic)
have it...

-Adam

-- 
-Adam Thompson, MCNE, MCSE, CWT, A+
 Vice-President / Chief Technology Officer
 Commerce Design Inc.
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