Lisi wrote:
> Next question: what does
>
> root 4099 4055 0 17:33 pts/3 00:00:00 grep --color thunderbird
This is the grep process.
/bin/bash (or whatever shell you use) starts two processes off
'ps -ef'
and
'grep --color thunderbird'
with the output of the first piped inte the second.
I expect if you type
alias
you will see a line similar to
grep='grep --colour'
which explains where the ' --color' comes from.
[ Because the second process is running *when* the first is running
you have the grep process listed in the ps output. ]
The grep pattern 'thunderbird' matches itself and so you see the
grep process in the output.
This is why
ps -ef | grep somewordpattern | wc -l
usully returns one more than you expect.
I.e. the above would return ' 1 ' when thunderbird is not running
and two or more when it is running.
