Can a bash script run simultaneous commands then wait for them to complete?

Question

I want to write a bash script where I run two commands simultaneously, then continue when they both complete.

Here's something that doesn't work, but I'll put it here to illustrate what I'm trying to do:

#!/bin/bash
./job1 &
./job2
./dostuffwithresults

The script will run both job1 and job2 at the same time, but will only wait for job2 to finish before continuing. If job1 takes longer, then the results might not be ready for the final command.

Michael Krelin - hacker · Accepted Answer · 2012-01-24 20:31:30Z

64

j1 &
j2 &
j3 &
wait $(jobs -p)
dostuffwithresults

answered Jan 24, 2012 at 20:31

Michael Krelin - hacker

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4 Comments

Johan Lundberg Over a year ago

+1, but the argument to wait is not required in this case as it's the default.

Michael Krelin - hacker Over a year ago

@JohanLundberg, indeed, I had no idea ;-)

libjack Over a year ago

Reason to add the argument to wait is if you wish to collect status from the jobs. Unfortunately, only returns the status of the last process in list, so would have to iterate to check/gather all status'

Xanlantos Over a year ago

some explanation how and why this works would be great

Harry Forbess · Accepted Answer · 2012-01-24 20:40:10Z

1

something like this should work

    #!/bin/bash
    while [ `pgrep job*` ]
    do 
    echo 'waiting'
    done

    ./dostuffwithresults

answered Jan 24, 2012 at 20:40

Harry Forbess

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