How to get the PID of a process in a pipeline

Question

Consider the following simplified example:

my_prog|awk \'...\' > output.csv &
my_pid=\"$!\" #Gives the PID for awk instead of for my_prog
sleep 10
kill $my         


        

Answer 1

With inspiration from @Demosthenex's answer: using subshells:

$ ( echo $BASHPID > pid1; exec vmstat 1 5 ) | tail -1 & 
[1] 17371
$ cat pid1
17370
$ pgrep -fl vmstat
17370 vmstat 1 5