jobs -- display the status of jobs in the current session

SYNOPSIS

jobs [-lnp] [job-identifier...]

DESCRIPTION

jobs produces a list of the processes in the current session. Each such process is numbered for easy identification by kill and is described by a line of information:

[job-identifier]   default   state   shell_command

job-identifier

is a decimal number which identifies the process. When you use the job-identifier as an argument to the commands or to jobs, preface the number with %.

default

identifies the default process (that is, the most recently suspended process). If default is a +, this process is the default job. If default is a -, this job becomes the default when the current default job exits. There is at most one + job and one - job.

state

shows a job as:

Running: if it is not suspended and has not exited
Done: if it exited successfully
Done(exit status): if it exited with a non-zero exit status
Stopped (signal): if it is suspended; signal is the signal that suspended the job

shell_command

is the associated shell command which created the process.

Options

-l: also displays the process group ID of a job (before state).
-n: displays jobs that have changed states and free dead jobs.
-p: displays only the process IDs of all processes.

The -l and -p options are mutually exclusive.

DIAGNOSTICS

Possible exit status values are:

0: Successful completion.
>0: The number of job-identifiers that were not found.

PORTABILITY

POSIX.2. x/OPEN Portability Guide 4.0. Windows 2000. Windows XP. Windows Server 2003. Windows Vista.

jobs is provided as a MKS KornShell built-in only.

NOTE

You cannot use | to pipe output from jobs to another command and get useful results. The jobs reports the status of background jobs in the current shell; however, when you use the pipe operator, jobs is actually run in a new shell, which does not have background jobs, so it cannot report on any. You can, however, use > to redirect jobs output to a file which can then be used as an input file by another command.

AVAILABILITY

MKS Toolkit for Power Users
MKS Toolkit for System Administrators
MKS Toolkit for Developers
MKS Toolkit for Interoperability
MKS Toolkit for Professional Developers
MKS Toolkit for Enterprise Developers
MKS Toolkit for Enterprise Developers 64-Bit Edition

jobs
display the status of jobs in the current session

KornShell Built-in