Getting Process ID of (running) applet

Question

Using *do shell script "ps -x"* I can get a "list" of PID's. If there is sufficient identifying information in paragraphs of that "list," it's easy enough to get the PID I want. For example, if Safari is running, then its PID is the result of this:
set A_ to do shell script "ps -x" -- as string
repeat with i_ from 1 to count paragraphs of A_
set Par_ to paragraph i_ of A_
if Par_ contains "safari" then set PID_ to word 1 of Par_
end repeat
This works because "safari" is prominent in one paragraph of the result returned by the do shell script command. If the goal is the PID of an applet I wrote, however, the problem seems to be identifying a prominent word that corresponds to the applet; in different instances, I have found that
• The applet name shows up in a paragraph of A_ (that's easy to work with)
• The word "applet" shows up in a paragraph of A_ (that's easy to work with also but only if I know there's only one possible applet running -- otherwise it's ambiguous).
• Nothing in A_ is identifiable to me as being related to the applet -- yes, there usually are unidentifiable paragraphs, maybe several, and one might be one related to the applet. Or the applet information might be totally absent.
First, it's not clear to me why I get different results (as above) for different applets. If I could ensure that the applet name shows up in A_, my issue would be resolved.
I've spent some time with "man ps" in terminal, but all I got from that was that ps is a command with myriad options. I probably missed the pertinent option, but is there such an option?
Ideas, or another approach? Thank you.

Answer 1

Depending on what command you are running you can get multiple results - for example, if you perform a grep on the results you will have processes from the shell and grep in addition to your process. You can have processes with the same name (applet), but you can match their path to your applet:
<pre style="
font-family: Monaco, 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;
font-size: 10px;
font-weight: normal;
margin: 0px;
padding: 5px;
border: 1px solid #000000;
width: 720px;
color: #000000;
background-color: #DAFFB6;
overflow: auto;"
title="this text can be pasted into the AppleScript Editor">
set myPath to POSIX path of (path to me)
repeat with anItem in paragraphs of (do shell script "ps -x")
if anItem contains myPath then
display alert (first word of anItem) message anItem
exit repeat
end if
end repeat
</pre>