Macintosh Terminal Pocket Guide

Shell Job Control

jobs	List your jobs.
&	Run a job in the background.
^Z	Suspend the current (foreground) job.
suspend	Suspend a shell.
fg	Unsuspend a job: bring it into the foreground.
bg	Make a suspended job run in the background.

All shells have job control: the ability to run programs in the background (multitasking behind the scenes) and foreground (running as the active process at your shell prompt). A job is simply the shell’s unit of work. When you run a command interactively, your current shell tracks it as a job. When the command completes, the associated job disappears. Jobs are at a higher level than OS X processes (discussed in Viewing Processes); OS X knows nothing about them. They are merely constructs of the shell. Some important vocabulary about job control is:

Foreground job

Running in a shell, occupying the shell prompt so you cannot run another command

Background job

Running in a shell, but not occupying the shell prompt, so you can run another command in the same shell

Suspend

To stop a foreground job temporarily

Resume

To cause a suspended job to start running again