Waiting for a process to die

[Steven Schlansker]

Chris Rees wrote:
> [ `ps ax |grep pid | wc -l ` = 1 ] && (echo "done!" | Mail -s "PROC
> DONE" kelly.terry.jones at gmail.com)
>   

Not always going to work.  For example,

[steven at scs:~]% ps ax | grep init
    1 ?        Ss     0:39 init [2] 
13421 pts/1    R+     0:00 grep init

Also if you use its pid, 1, you get a whole bunch of uninteresting 
processes as you're grepping for "1" ;)

[steven at scs:~]% ps ax | grep 1 | wc -l
94