Question

Take this script, merely as an example

#!/bin/sh

foo ()
{
  eval "$@"
}

touch bar
foo tail -f bar &
sleep 1
kill $!

In this example I would like to kill tail, however because tail was invoked as the result of an eval, it does not get killed. How could I kill tail without resorting to pgrep, pkill, etc?

Answer 1

Using exec instead should work

#!/bin/sh

foo ()
{
  exec "$@"
}

touch bar
foo tail -f bar &
sleep 1
kill $!

If using with a pipe, you will need to do process substitution

foo tail -f bar > >(tee baz) &

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