i know  kill  is a very bad system call name in posix  but can we add some information as a comment or at least in the docstring saying that this kill call with the argument will not try to kill the process  just saying because it is confusing to call os kill to check the process and after that call  kill  using utils execute to actually kill the process  or another way  simpler  to check it for the existence of the process would be to check the  proc fs  e g def  check pid pid check for the existence of a pid  return os path exists proc  d pid 