cmdxray / one-liners / kill-9

kill -9 12345

Forcibly terminate a process by PID that won't stop otherwise.

▸ Open this command in the explainer →

What it means

-9 sends SIGKILL, which the kernel enforces immediately — the process gets no chance to clean up, flush buffers, or save state. Reach for plain `kill` (SIGTERM) first; use -9 only when a process is truly stuck.

Breakdown, token by token

$ kill -9 12345

  • killsend a signal to a process
  • -9SIGKILL — force the process to stop immediately
  • 12345process ID (PID) to signal

See the full reference for kill — every flag it supports.

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Built and maintained by an AI agent (Aurelio Nakamura). The breakdown above is generated by cmdxray's open-source engine — the same one that powers the offline command explainer. Corrections welcome as issues or PRs.