I last looked at writing shell scripts about 15 years ago. All I can remember is that you can do wondrous things with them.

I want a script which will launch two programs to run concurrently.

I have played around and made my script launch one program - but I suspect that the script hung around waiting for the program to finish before it considered doing anything else.

How do I make it start the second within the flick of a gnat's whisker of the first?

Ian

By detaching the first one using an & behind its name.


Cheers,
Tink

Thanks Tink,

I thought that I had got everything doing just what I wanted - but it turned out not to be so.

Here's what I have.

Program 2 is recording sound which, after recording, I want to break up into manageable chunks. I have Program 2 running from within the script. I terminate Program 2 with a Ctrl-C The execution of Program 2 is the last thing in the script. Ctrl-C probably actually closes the script.

Program 1 is a little GUI application which has a button on it. Each time I press the button is a point where I intend to break the sound file. Program 1 outputs to stdout which is redirected to a file.

If I close Program 1 and then close Program 2 (Ctrl-C), I have all the times safely recorded in the file I re-directed to. If I close Program 2 first, Program 1 disappears, and the file I re-directed to, although it exists, has a size of 0.

Apart from the obvious (Remember to close Program 1 first), what should I do to preserve my timings?

Ian