The jobs Command

When working in Unix, it is easy to forget what local processes are running. Say you need to bring a background process to the foreground but you don't know the job number you need to select. Here, the jobs command will show you what the job number is if you have forgotten it. Simply type jobs at the shell prompt and you will be shown the ID numbers for any processes you have started or stopped.

						> jobs
					

The jobs command will also provide you with a history of sorts; using this command will list all previous process that have been started and stopped.

We now come to one of the most important commands in this lesson: the ps command.

Get SAMS Teach Yourself Unix in 10 Minutes now with the O’Reilly learning platform.

O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.