Bash: Put a job in the background and then tail the log

Question

How do you make the escaping work so that the & is actually running the first command in the background?

# foo param1 param2 >> run.out &; tail -f run.out

Solution 1

Just drop the semicolon:

# foo param1 param2 >> run.out & tail -f run.out

Solution 2

You need to put the backgrounded command in ()'s.

(ls -R / >>/tmp/list & ); tail -f /tmp/list

Sadly, this really backgrounds it. You won't be able to us %1 to get to its PID.

Comments

[Teddy]

It helps to think of the ampersand as a variant of the semicolon, which it is, really.