Controlling processes

Waiting for background jobs to finish before proceeding

The wait(C) command is useful when you want to wait for the completion of background processes before performing a foreground command on them. For example:

   $ spell file1 > spell_file1 &
   [1]     13655
   $ spell file2 > spell_file2 &
   [2]     13657
   $ wait
   $ sort spell_file1 spell_file2 > spell_list

This script file runs the two spell(C) commands simultaneously in the background, waits for them both to complete, and then sorts the resultant files (spell_file1 and spell_file2), putting the output in spell_list.

See also ``Automating frequent tasks'' for details of script files.