Question

In UNIX, I have a utility, say ‘Test_Ex’, a binary file. How can I write a job or a shell script(as a cron job) running always in the background which keeps checking if ‘Test_Ex’ is still running every 5 seconds(and probably hide this job). If it is running, do nothing. If not, delete a directory at the specified path.

Answer 1

Try this script:

pgrep Test_Ex > /dev/null || rm -r dir

If you don’t have pgrep, use

ps -e -ocomm | grep Test_Ex || ...

instead.