This command is often used in conjunction with the kill
command. The ps command will give you a listing of all the
recent processes that your account has run and which pid
(process ID) number each process has. Here is an example of the
ps command:


ux1>ps
 PID TT STAT  TIME COMMAND
 7268 qm I     0:00 elm
 7312 qm I     0:00 sleep 60
15497 qm I     1:00 sigswitch -f sigswitch
 7530 qM S     0:02 -tcsh[kundert] (tcsh)
 7625 qM R     0:00 ps


The pid number is a way of referencing every process that it is started on
a machine. It is a basic accounting feature. Once you know the pid you can
use the kill command to stop the process.