How do I close a program from the terminal

Suppose for example vlc media player is running and some directory is also opened in file browser. Now I want to close either the file browser or vlc.

One way can be to just click on the cross button on the top left hand corner, but how can I do this using terminal commands?

1 Answer

Now every file is handled by another program say gedit and folders the same, so to kill [ the program handling that file or folder ] we can use two methods:

1. The program name with:

   pkill <name_of_program>

2. use of program PID (process id)

   • find the PID with pgrep <name_of_program>, then
   • kill it with kill <PID>

Information:

man pkill
man kill

Note: When closed this way any unsaved changes will be lost.