Job Control

Most of the commands we have tried so far take only a few seconds, at most, to complete, but in the real world, it is not uncommon to have tasks that run for long periods of time, which could be anywhere from minutes to hours or even weeks. In fact, some tasks never exit. They run forever, reading live data and processing it. A task or command that is running either in the foreground (the default) or background (when launched with &) is called a job. In this topic, we will learn about the mechanisms that are used to control jobs.

Keyboard Shortcuts for Controlling Jobs

Various keyboard shortcuts can be used to control jobs. These shortcuts send a signal to a program, which can be of various types and have conventional names. Some of these shortcuts and their respective functionalities are discussed in the following table:

Figure 3.1: A table showing the shortcuts and their functionalities

Look at the following examples:

robin ...