Question: Running a command in separate thread

Submitted by gchii on Tue, 08/19/2008 - 15:08.

How do I invoke a command--so that it runs in a separate thread?

Is this like Linux?

 grep import > ggg.txt &

Thanks,

‹ Proposal: Changing the command API without rewriting commands. Proposal: Mechanism for command plug-in. ›

Default behaviour

Submitted by lsantha on Tue, 08/19/2008 - 16:55.

Commands are executed in a separate thread by default but they block the console while running.
You can unblock the console with Ctr-Z but the command keeps running in the background.
At the moment I don't know of a way for starting up a command in the background.
You might want to create a feature request for this.

The problem with supporting '&'...

Submitted by Stephen Crawley on Wed, 08/20/2008 - 08:18.

... is that JNode currently has no reliable way of killing a command. In the old days, the shell tried to use Thread.kill(), but the only thing that was good for was making the kernel panic. Even if it did work, Thread.kill is a dodgy way of doing things; check out the reasons that Sun deprecated it!

Support for job control functionality (background, foreground, stop, continue, kill) in the shell / interpreter is on hold until we have an isolate-based command invoker working.