Checking for process and closing if it exists?

Question

A current part of my code is:property thePID : missing valueon disableSleep_(sender)        set thePID to (do shell script"caffeinate &amp;&gt; /dev/null &amp; echo $!")    end disableSleep_    on enableSleep_(sender)        if thePID is missing value then return -- no process        do shell script "kill $(pgrep caffeinate) " &amp; thePID        set thePID to missing value -- reset for next time    end enableSleep_At the end of the program I have:on applicationShouldTerminateAfterLastWindowClosed_(sender)        returntrue    end applicationShouldTerminateAfterLastWindowClosed_          on applicationShouldTerminate_(sender)                    return current application&#x27;s NSTerminateNow          end applicationShouldTerminate_And I would like it to check to see if the process "caffeinate" exists, and if it does, I would like it to kill all "caffeinate" processes. Any ideas?

red_menace · Accepted Answer

Using killall with the process name will kill all of those processes - the shell script will just return an error message if the process name doesn&#x27;t exist:do shell script"killall caffeinate"for example (tested):    on disableSleep_(sender)        if thePID is missing value then -- not running yet          set thePID to (do shell script"caffeinate &amp;&gt; /dev/null &amp; echo $!")        end if    end disableSleep_    on enableSleep_(sender)        try-- skip error if process name doesn&#x27;t exist          do shell script "killall caffeinate"        end try        set thePID to missing value -- reset for next time    end enableSleep_

twtwtw · Answer

a slightly different (and somewhat easier) approach to the problem.  Use a launchd plist that you runs caffeinate, then load and unload that plist as needed.  save the following property list as a plain-text file at ~/Library/LaunchAgents/user.nodoze.plist":&lt;?xml version&#x3D;"1.0" encoding&#x3D;"UTF-8"?&gt;&lt;!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd"&gt;&lt;plist version&#x3D;"1.0"&gt;&lt;dict&gt;          &lt;key&gt;Disabled&lt;/key&gt;          &lt;true/&gt;          &lt;key&gt;RunAtLoad&lt;/key&gt;          &lt;true/&gt;          &lt;key&gt;Label&lt;/key&gt;          &lt;string&gt;user.nodoze&lt;/string&gt;          &lt;key&gt;Program&lt;/key&gt;          &lt;string&gt;/usr/bin/caffeinate&lt;/string&gt;&lt;/dict&gt;&lt;/plist&gt;Then run the following applescript to start and stop it:if (do shell script "launchctl list") contains "user.nodoze" then          set r to "enabled."else          set r to "disabled."end ifset b to button returned of (display alert "Caffeinate is currently " &amp; r buttons {"Never Mind", "Enable", "Disable"})if b is "Enable" then          do shell script "launchctl load -F ~/Library/LaunchAgents/user.nodoze.plist"else if b is "Disable" then          do shell script "launchctl unload ~/Library/LaunchAgents/user.nodoze.plist"end ifthe Disabled key is set to true to keep the plist from loading when you log in; the -F option overrides the Disabled key to load the job on demand.