PID of a command executed in bash

I need a linux / unix command that will execute another command and write the PID of the command it executes to a file… is there such a command?

I am not looking for any scheme that puts processes in the background and leverages the shell var $!

Example:

Assume the command I am looking for is execwritepid. I need to be able to call:

execwritepid -e "/usr/bin/script -f sometext.log" -f /var/log/script.pid

Such that the PID of script -f sometext.log is written to /var/log/script.pid

script is the the command I’m executing.

SOLUTION

The explicit solution, based on Daniel Pittman’s answer is:

bash -c 'echo $$ > /var/log/script.pid && exec /usr/bin/script -f sometext.log'

I could not get the option that uses exec to pass -f to script.

You can do what you want with this code:

echo $$ > /var/log/script.pid && exec /usr/bin/script

exec replaces the current process with another – which means that it retains the current pid.

If you want your parent script to carry on you can wrap that:

bash -c 'echo $$ && exec /usr/bin/script'

That will run the subcommand in a new shell, record the PID, then replace itself with the other process.

Check more discussion of this question.

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