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The Computer Nonsense Guide
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Job control (UNIX) & Job control mode (JCL) #50

Closed jchassoul closed 4 years ago

jchassoul commented 4 years ago

Unix + Erlang = Fun

In Unix-like operating systems, job control refers to control of jobs by a shell, especially interactively, where a "job" is a shell's representation for a process group.

Typically, the shell keeps a list of jobs in a job table. Recall that a job corresponds to a process group, which consists of all the members of a pipeline and their descendants.

Curious notes: a "task" is a non-technical term for "some activity", while "process" and "job" are technical terms.

A job ID is an abstract reference by the shell to a resource (a process group) managed externally, by the operating system, hence is a handle.