Julia EvansJul 2, 2024

poll: when you're using your shell **interactively**, do you ever use its job control features (ctrl+z, fg, bg, `jobs`, `wait`, etc?)

(other than maybe occasionally backgrounding a process with &)

yes, frequently
23.1%
yes, occasionally
36.8%
never (or almost never)
39%
other
1%
Poll ended at .
Show threadJulia EvansJul 2, 2024

I'm also curious about reasons folks are using job control instead of opening a new tab in their terminal/tmux/screen

so far we have:

* use ctrl+z to suspend a CPU-hungry program because you need to use the CPU for something else
* you're in a situation with no screen/tmux/fancy terminal
* background a GUI app so it's not taking up a terminal tab
* accidentally started a long-running job without tmux/screen
* already set up a lot of environment variables
* accidentally ran ctrl+z

(2/?)

Show threadMike GerdtsJul 2, 2024
@b0rk often I tend to use a lot of loops, pipes, etc. on the command line. The long running command that I suspend is often hogging a shell that has some complex command that I ran earlier and need to run again.
Show threadJulia Evans
@mgerdts thanks! is the point here that you can't retrieve the complex command you ran earlier in a different terminal? (because of the way bash handles history?)
Jul 2, 2024 at 12:37pmWeb
Show threadMike GerdtsJul 2, 2024
@b0rk yep. When I used some other shell (ksh?) that shared history between terminals, I was much less happy.
Show threadJulia EvansJul 2, 2024
@mgerdts oh interesting, can you say why? I really appreciate the way my shell (fish) shares history between terminals and I'm curious about why the way ksh did it didn't work for you
Show threadMike GerdtsJul 2, 2024
@b0rk it’s been a while, but I think it was because what I got from hitting up arrow in one terminal varied by what I (or someone else, in the case of shared accounts) typed in some other terminal. It’s a great way to get an overly broad rm in the wrong directory.
Show threadJulia EvansJul 2, 2024
@mgerdts thanks that makes sense! Sounds pretty dangerous. I really appreciate fish's approach (where when you open a new terminal, you'll get all the history from every other open terminal, but if you run a command and press up arrow, you'll only get the command you just typed)