JOBS(1)                    POSIX Programmer's Manual                   JOBS(1)



PROLOG
       This manual page is part of the POSIX Programmer's Manual.  The OS
       implementation of this interface may differ (consult the corresponding
       OS manual page for details of OS behavior), or the interface may not be
       implemented on OS.

NAME
       jobs -- display status of jobs in the current session

SYNOPSIS
       jobs [[-l|-p]] [[job__id...]]

DESCRIPTION
       The jobs utility shall display the status of jobs that were started in
       the current shell environment; see Section 2.12, Shell Execution
       Environment.

       When jobs reports the termination status of a job, the shell shall
       remove its process ID from the list of those ``known in the current
       shell execution environment''; see Section 2.9.3.1, Examples.

OPTIONS
       The jobs utility shall conform to the Base Definitions volume of
       POSIX.1-2017, Section 12.2, Utility Syntax Guidelines.

       The following options shall be supported:

       -l        (The letter ell.) Provide more information about each job
                 listed. This information shall include the job number,
                 current job, process group ID, state, and the command that
                 formed the job.

       -p        Display only the process IDs for the process group leaders of
                 the selected jobs.

       By default, the jobs utility shall display the status of all stopped
       jobs, running background jobs and all jobs whose status has changed and
       have not been reported by the shell.

OPERANDS
       The following operand shall be supported:

       job__id    Specifies the jobs for which the status is to be displayed.
                 If no job__id is given, the status information for all jobs
                 shall be displayed. The format of job__id is described in the
                 Base Definitions volume of POSIX.1-2017, Section 3.204, Job
                 Control Job ID.

STDIN
       Not used.

INPUT FILES
       None.

ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES
       The following environment variables shall affect the execution of jobs:

       LANG      Provide a default value for the internationalization
                 variables that are unset or null. (See the Base Definitions
                 volume of POSIX.1-2017, Section 8.2, Internationalization
                 Variables for the precedence of internationalization
                 variables used to determine the values of locale categories.)

       LC__ALL    If set to a non-empty string value, override the values of
                 all the other internationalization variables.

       LC__CTYPE  Determine the locale for the interpretation of sequences of
                 bytes of text data as characters (for example, single-byte as
                 opposed to multi-byte characters in arguments).

       LC__MESSAGES
                 Determine the locale that should be used to affect the format
                 and contents of diagnostic messages written to standard error
                 and informative messages written to standard output.

       NLSPATH   Determine the location of message catalogs for the processing
                 of LC__MESSAGES.

ASYNCHRONOUS EVENTS
       Default.

STDOUT
       If the -p option is specified, the output shall consist of one line for
       each process ID:


           "%d\n", <process ID>

       Otherwise, if the -l option is not specified, the output shall be a
       series of lines of the form:


           "[%d] %c %s %s\n", <job-number>, <current>, <state>, <command>

       where the fields shall be as follows:

       <current> The character ''++'' identifies the job that would be used as a
                 default for the fg or bg utilities; this job can also be
                 specified using the job__id %+ or ""%%%%"".  The character ''--''
                 identifies the job that would become the default if the
                 current default job were to exit; this job can also be
                 specified using the job__id %-. For other jobs, this field is
                 a <space>.  At most one job can be identified with ''++'' and at
                 most one job can be identified with ''--''.  If there is any
                 suspended job, then the current job shall be a suspended job.
                 If there are at least two suspended jobs, then the previous
                 job also shall be a suspended job.

       <job-number>
                 A number that can be used to identify the process group to
                 the wait, fg, bg, and kill utilities. Using these utilities,
                 the job can be identified by prefixing the job number with
                 ''%%''.

       <state>   One of the following strings (in the POSIX locale):

                 Running   Indicates that the job has not been suspended by a
                           signal and has not exited.

                 Done      Indicates that the job completed and returned exit
                           status zero.

                 Done(code)
                           Indicates that the job completed normally and that
                           it exited with the specified non-zero exit status,
                           code, expressed as a decimal number.

                 Stopped   Indicates that the job was suspended by the SIGTSTP
                           signal.

                 Stopped (SIGTSTP)
                           Indicates that the job was suspended by the SIGTSTP
                           signal.

                 Stopped (SIGSTOP)
                           Indicates that the job was suspended by the SIGSTOP
                           signal.

                 Stopped (SIGTTIN)
                           Indicates that the job was suspended by the SIGTTIN
                           signal.

                 Stopped (SIGTTOU)
                           Indicates that the job was suspended by the SIGTTOU
                           signal.

                 The implementation may substitute the string Suspended in
                 place of Stopped.  If the job was terminated by a signal, the
                 format of <state> is unspecified, but it shall be visibly
                 distinct from all of the other <state> formats shown here and
                 shall indicate the name or description of the signal causing
                 the termination.

       <command> The associated command that was given to the shell.

       If the -l option is specified, a field containing the process group ID
       shall be inserted before the <state> field. Also, more processes in a
       process group may be output on separate lines, using only the process
       ID and <command> fields.

STDERR
       The standard error shall be used only for diagnostic messages.

OUTPUT FILES
       None.

EXTENDED DESCRIPTION
       None.

EXIT STATUS
       The following exit values shall be returned:

        0    Successful completion.

       >0    An error occurred.

CONSEQUENCES OF ERRORS
       Default.

       The following sections are informative.

APPLICATION USAGE
       The -p option is the only portable way to find out the process group of
       a job because different implementations have different strategies for
       defining the process group of the job. Usage such as $(jobs -p)
       provides a way of referring to the process group of the job in an
       implementation-independent way.

       The jobs utility does not work as expected when it is operating in its
       own utility execution environment because that environment has no
       applicable jobs to manipulate. See the APPLICATION USAGE section for
       bg.  For this reason, jobs is generally implemented as a shell regular
       built-in.

EXAMPLES
       None.

RATIONALE
       Both ""%%%%"" and ""%%++"" are used to refer to the current job. Both forms are
       of equal validity--the ""%%%%"" mirroring ""$$$$"" and ""%%++"" mirroring the
       output of jobs.  Both forms reflect historical practice of the
       KornShell and the C shell with job control.

       The job control features provided by bg, fg, and jobs are based on the
       KornShell. The standard developers examined the characteristics of the
       C shell versions of these utilities and found that differences exist.
       Despite widespread use of the C shell, the KornShell versions were
       selected for this volume of POSIX.1-2017 to maintain a degree of
       uniformity with the rest of the KornShell features selected (such as
       the very popular command line editing features).

       The jobs utility is not dependent on the job control option, as are the
       seemingly related bg and fg utilities because jobs is useful for
       examining background jobs, regardless of the condition of job control.
       When the user has invoked a set +m command and job control has been
       turned off, jobs can still be used to examine the background jobs
       associated with that current session. Similarly, kill can then be used
       to kill background jobs with kill %<background job number>.

       The output for terminated jobs is left unspecified to accommodate
       various historical systems. The following formats have been witnessed:

        1. Killed(signal name)

        2. signal name

        3. signal name(coredump)

        4. signal description- core dumped

       Most users should be able to understand these formats, although it
       means that applications have trouble parsing them.

       The calculation of job IDs was not described since this would suggest
       an implementation, which may impose unnecessary restrictions.

       In an early proposal, a -n option was included to ``Display the status
       of jobs that have changed, exited, or stopped since the last status
       report''. It was removed because the shell always writes any changed
       status of jobs before each prompt.

FUTURE DIRECTIONS
       None.

SEE ALSO
       Section 2.12, Shell Execution Environment, bg, fg, kill, wait

       The Base Definitions volume of POSIX.1-2017, Section 3.204, Job Control
       Job ID, Chapter _8, Environment Variables, Section 12.2, Utility Syntax
       Guidelines

COPYRIGHT
       Portions of this text are reprinted and reproduced in electronic form
       from IEEE Std 1003.1-2017, Standard for Information Technology --
       Portable Operating System Interface (POSIX), The Open Group Base
       Specifications Issue 7, 2018 Edition, Copyright (C) 2018 by the
       Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc and The Open
       Group.  In the event of any discrepancy between this version and the
       original IEEE and The Open Group Standard, the original IEEE and The
       Open Group Standard is the referee document. The original Standard can
       be obtained online at http://www.opengroup.org/unix/online.html .

       Any typographical or formatting errors that appear in this page are
       most likely to have been introduced during the conversion of the source
       files to man page format. To report such errors, see
       https://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/reporting_bugs.html .



IEEE/The Open Group                  2017                              JOBS(1)
