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Running jobs in the background

To run a job in the background, type an ampersand (&) at the end of the command line that starts that job, or type the following after you've started and then suspended the job: bg.

After putting a job in the background, you can check its progress by typing the command jobs.

UNIX responds to this command by listing all the jobs that have been suspended during the current terminal session. This display looks similar to the following:

[1] + Running
cc -o myprogram myprogram.c
[2] + Stopped (tty input) otherprogram

UNIX will subsequently notify you when a job that's running in the background stops running.

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