How to kill a process started by a script in the script itself?

Question

I am a total noob in shell scripting. I am creating a .sh file with multiple commands, but my problem is that the last command is an executable file that after executing stays open and the processes keep running in the terminal until I close the terminal or press Ctrl+C or \. I want to kill these processes or quit the terminal which will also kill the process automatically while running the .sh file. This is the script so far:

#!/usr/bin/env bash
cd ./var/www/testGraduationProject1/public/Hume2Compiler/bin/
export PATH=$PATH:`pwd`
humec -lotsaspace tails.hume;
./tails > hello.txt

I have tried these two commands but they just stop the loading of process in terminal, but without closing the terminal or the process itself.

killall tails
stty -a | grep inter

Answer 1

Your question is vague, but I assume you're asking how to make the tails command run for N seconds then kill it?

If so, use the timeout command (installed by default in 12.04).

Here's your script using timeout (removed some redundant code while I was at it). It runs tails for 10 minutes (600 seconds) before killing it with the TERM signal.

#!/usr/bin/env bash
PATH=$PATH:$PWD/var/www/testGraduationProject1/public/Hume2Compiler/bin
humec -lotsaspace tails.hume
timeout 600 tails > hello.txt

See http://mywiki.wooledge.org/BashFAQ/068 for more information.

Answer 2

Try this:

Put this line explicitly in the background:

./tails > hello.txt&

Then add

pkill tails