This manual page is part of the POSIX Programmer's Manual. The Linux
implementation of this interface may differ (consult the corresponding Linux
manual page for details of Linux behavior), or the interface may not be
implemented on Linux.
bg — run jobs in the background
bg [job_id...]
If job control is enabled (see the description of
set -m), the
bg utility shall resume suspended jobs from the current environment
(see
Section 2.12,
Shell Execution Environment) by running them
as background jobs. If the job specified by
job_id is already a running
background job, the
bg utility shall have no effect and shall exit
successfully.
Using
bg to place a job into the background shall cause its process ID to
become ``known in the current shell execution environment'', as if it had been
started as an asynchronous list; see
Section 2.9.3.1,
Examples.
None.
The following operand shall be supported:
- job_id
- Specify the job to be resumed as a background job. If no
job_id operand is given, the most recently suspended job shall be
used. The format of job_id is described in the Base Definitions
volume of POSIX.1‐2017, Section 3.204, Job Control Job
ID.
Not used.
None.
The following environment variables shall affect the execution of
bg:
- LANG
- Provide a default value for the internationalization
variables that are unset or null. (See the Base Definitions volume of
POSIX.1‐2017, Section 8.2, Internationalization
Variables for the precedence of internationalization variables used to
determine the values of locale categories.)
- LC_ALL
- If set to a non-empty string value, override the values of
all the other internationalization variables.
- LC_CTYPE
- Determine the locale for the interpretation of sequences of
bytes of text data as characters (for example, single-byte as opposed to
multi-byte characters in arguments).
- LC_MESSAGES
-
Determine the locale that should be used to affect the format and contents
of diagnostic messages written to standard error.
- NLSPATH
- Determine the location of message catalogs for the
processing of LC_MESSAGES.
Default.
The output of
bg shall consist of a line in the format:
"[%d] %s\n", < job-number>, <command>
where the fields are as follows:
- <job-number>
- A number that can be used to identify the job to the
wait, fg, and kill utilities. Using these utilities,
the job can be identified by prefixing the job number with
'%'.
- <command>
- The associated command that was given to the shell.
The standard error shall be used only for diagnostic messages.
None.
None.
The following exit values shall be returned:
- 0
- Successful completion.
- >0
- An error occurred.
If job control is disabled, the
bg utility shall exit with an error and
no job shall be placed in the background.
The following sections are informative.
A job is generally suspended by typing the SUSP character
(<control>‐Z on most systems); see the Base Definitions volume of
POSIX.1‐2017,
Chapter 11,
General Terminal Interface. At
that point,
bg can put the job into the background. This is most
effective when the job is expecting no terminal input and its output has been
redirected to non-terminal files. A background job can be forced to stop when
it has terminal output by issuing the command:
A background job can be stopped with the command:
The
bg utility does not work as expected when it is operating in its own
utility execution environment because that environment has no suspended jobs.
In the following examples:
each
bg operates in a different environment and does not share its parent
shell's understanding of jobs. For this reason,
bg is generally
implemented as a shell regular built-in.
None.
The extensions to the shell specified in this volume of POSIX.1‐2017 have
mostly been based on features provided by the KornShell. The job control
features provided by
bg,
fg, and
jobs are also based on
the KornShell. The standard developers examined the characteristics of the C
shell versions of these utilities and found that differences exist. Despite
widespread use of the C shell, the KornShell versions were selected for this
volume of POSIX.1‐2017 to maintain a degree of uniformity with the rest
of the KornShell features selected (such as the very popular command line
editing features).
The
bg utility is expected to wrap its output if the output exceeds the
number of display columns.
None.
Section 2.9.3.1,
Examples,
fg,
kill,
jobs,
wait
The Base Definitions volume of POSIX.1‐2017,
Section 3.204,
Job
Control Job ID,
Chapter 8,
Environment Variables,
Chapter
11,
General Terminal Interface
Portions of this text are reprinted and reproduced in electronic form from IEEE
Std 1003.1-2017, Standard for Information Technology -- Portable Operating
System Interface (POSIX), The Open Group Base Specifications Issue 7, 2018
Edition, Copyright (C) 2018 by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics
Engineers, Inc and The Open Group. In the event of any discrepancy between
this version and the original IEEE and The Open Group Standard, the original
IEEE and The Open Group Standard is the referee document. The original
Standard can be obtained online at
http://www.opengroup.org/unix/online.html .
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