Korn Shell: Unix and Linux Programming Manual, Third Edition, The

Job Names

Most people use the job number to refer to a job, because one number is easy to remember. However, jobs can be referred to in a number of other ways: by process id, current/previous job, or all or part of a job name. If we had these jobs:

					$ jobs —l
					[3]  + 466 Stopped          split —5000 hugefile
					[2]  — 465 Running          find / —name  —print &
					[1]    463 Running          sleep 25 &
				

then the split job could be referred to as %3, %+, %%, 466, %split, or %?sp, the find job could be referred to as %2, %–, 465, %find, or %?f, and the sleep could be referred to as %1, 463, %sleep, or %?sl.

Table 5.2. Job Names

%n	job n
%+, %%	current job
%–	previous job
%string	job whose name begins with string
%?string	job that matches part or all of string