jobs(1)

jobs -- display status of jobs in the current session

Synopsis

/usr/bin/jobs [-l | -p] [job_id ...]

Description

This shell script executes the builtin command of the same name as implemented by the /u95/bin/sh( ) shell. See ksh(1) for more information on this shell.

The jobs utility displays the status of jobs that were started in the current shell environment (see the description of set -m on the ksh(1) manual page). When jobs reports the termination status of a job, the shell removes its process ID from the list of those known in the current shell execution environment. See the ``Commands'' and ``Jobs'' subsections of the ksh(1) manual page for more information on asynchronous command execution and job control.

Flags

The following options are supported:

-l: Provide detailed information about each job listed. This information includes the job number, current job, process group ID, state and the command that formed the job.
-p: Display only the process IDs for the process group leaders of the selected jobs. By default, the jobs command displays the status of all stopped jobs, running background jobs and all jobs whose status has changed and have not been reported by the shell.

Operands

The job_id parameter specifies the process ID of the job whose status is to be displayed. If no job_id operand is given, the status of all jobs is displayed.

Environment variables

The following environment variables affect the execution of bg:

LANG: Provide a default value for the internationalization variables that are unset or null. If LANG is unset or null, the corresponding value from the implementation-specific default locale will be used. If any of the internationalization variables contains an invalid setting, the utility will behave as if none of the variables had been defined.
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- 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.

Output

If the -p option is specified, the output consists of one line for each process ID.

Otherwise, if the -l option is not specified, the output is a series of lines of the form:

[job-number] current state command

where the fields are as follows:

job-number

A number that can be used to identify the process group to the wait(1), fg(1), bg(1), and kill(1) utilities.

current

The character ``+'' identifies the job that would be used as a default for the fg or bg commands; this job can also be specified using the job_id %+ or %%. The character - identifies the job that would become the default if the current default job were to exit; this job can also be specified using the job_id %-. For other jobs, this field is a space character. At most one job can be identified with ``+'' and at most one job can be identified with -. If there is any suspended job, then the current job will be a suspended job. If there are at least two suspended jobs, then the previous job will also be a suspended job.

state

One of the following strings (in the POSIX Locale):

Running: Indicates that the job has not been suspended by a signal and has not exited.
Done: Indicates that the job completed and returned exit status zero.
Done(code): Indicates that the job completed normally and that it exited with the specified non-zero exit status, code, expressed as a decimal number.
Stopped (SIGTSTP): Indicates that the job was suspended by the SIGTSTP signal.
Stopped (SIGSTOP): Indicates that the job was suspended by the SIGSTOP signal.
Stopped (SIGTTIN): Indicates that the job was suspended by the SIGTTIN signal.
Stopped (SIGTTOU): Indicates that the job was suspended by the SIGTTOU signal.
Terminated: Indicates that the job was terminated by a SIGTERM signal.
signal: Indicates that the job was terminated by the indicated signal.

command

The associated command that was given to the shell. If the -l option is specified, a field containing the process group ID is inserted before the state field. Also, more processes in a process group may be output on separate lines, using only the process ID and command fields.

Exit codes

An exit code of 0 indicates successful completion; an exit code greater than 0 indicates an error.

Usage

Use the -p option to find out the process group of a job. Usage such as

(jobs -p)

provides a portable way of referring to the process group of a job.

The jobs utility will not work as expected when it is operating in its own utility execution environment because that environment will have no applicable jobs to manipulate. See the ``Usage'' subsection of bg(1).

References

bg(1), fg(1), ksh(1)