Does kill always terminate the process?

The kill command in Unix-like systems sends a signal to a process. It does not always result in its termination.

For example, kill -9 (SIGKILL) guarantees to kill the process, as this signal cannot be handled or ignored.

However, if kill is used without specifying a signal, it defaults to sending SIGTERM, which the process can catch and handle, for example, for a graceful shutdown. In this case, the process may ignore the signal and continue running.

Thus, kill does not always kill a process; it depends on the type of signal and the behavior of the process.