Go to the previous, next section.

Controlling Jobs

When you're running a program at your terminal, sometimes it takes longer to complete than you had expected. BSD UNIX, DYNIX, and SunOS provide tools to deal with this problem. These tools are collectively known as job control.

One job-control tool lets you suspend a program that is taking a long time to execute. When you suspend a program, it stops running and frees your terminal for other work. Another job control tool allows you to continue running the program in the background, causing the program to continue running detached from your terminal. Using a third job control tool, you can return the job to the foreground at any time.

Go to the previous, next section.