CLI for Noobies: A Primer on the Linux Command Line

Chapter 14. Not Your Father’s Batch

I’ve heard old-timers say that back in the day, when pulling an all-nighter at the data center, they would put hot dogs on top of an IBM S/360 mainframe to warm them up. Now that’s what I call a classical batch environment. These days, batch is a whole ’nother thing. Let’s take a look at a handy little program called batch, natch.

Just in case you are not familiar with the term, batch originally was used to describe information processing done by reading a stack of punched cards containing instructions on which programs to run, where to find the needed data, perhaps the data itself, and instructions on where to put the output. No keyboard or video display was required.

Let’s say that you want to compile X.org’s ...