How to programmatically submit a job and know its job number

I am wondering how (if there is a way at all) to programmatically
submit a job in such a way that the submitting program knows the
submitted job number. The purpose of knowing the job number would be
to save it for later, in case the submitted job (scheduled to run
potentially far in the future) needs to be ended/canceled, again
programmatically.

The reason I'm hoping to know the number is that it would be
convenient to submit jobs with the same job name, but distinguish them
by number. If there isn't a (sufficiently convenient) way to do this,
then I can come up with a scheme to submit jobs with unique job names.
But before going that route, I thought I'd check with the experts.
This sounds like something other folks would have had occasion to do.

John Y.