fg Command

Purpose

Runs jobs in the foreground.

Syntax

fg [JobID]

Description

If job control is enabled, the fg command moves a background job in the current environment into the foreground. Use the JobID parameter to indicate a specific job to be run in the foreground. If this parameter is not supplied, the fg command uses the job most recently suspended, placed in the background, or run as a background job.

The JobID parameter can be a process ID number, or you can use one of the following symbol combinations:

Item	Description
%Number	Refers to a job by the job number.
%String	Refers to a job whose name begins with the specified string.
%?String	Refers to a job whose name contains the specified string.
%+ OR %%	Refers to the current job.
%-	Refers to the previous job.

Using the fg command to place a job into the foreground removes the job's process ID from the list of those known by the current shell environment.

The /usr/bin/fg command does not work when operating in its own command execution environment, because that environment does not have applicable jobs to manipulate. For this reason, the fg command is implemented as a Korn shell or POSIX shell regular built-in command.

Exit Status

The following exit values are returned:

Item	Description
0	Successful completion.
>0	An error occurred.

If job control is disabled, the fg command exits with an error, and no job is placed in the foreground.

Examples

If the output of the jobs -l command shows the following job running in the background:

[1] + 16477RunningSleep 100 &

use the process ID to run the sleep 100 & command in the foreground by entering:

fg 16477

The screen displays:

sleep

Files

Item	Description
/usr/bin/ksh	Contains the Korn shell fg built-in command.
/usr/bin/fg	Contains the fg command.