What is "pgrep"

'''pgrep''' is a command-line utility initially written for use with the Solaris 7 operating system by Mike Shapiro. It has since been reimplemented for Linux and the BSDs ( DragonFly BSD, FreeBSD, NetBSD, and OpenBSD). It searches for all the named processes that can be specified as extended regular expression patterns, and—by default—returns their process ID. Alternatives include [[pidof]] (finds process ID given a program name) and [[ps (Unix)|ps]].