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What are some of your most useful or favorite terminal commands?
(literature.cafe)
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this post was submitted on 16 Dec 2025
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I have a script named
din my PATH and it contains this:It allows me to run any program in a fully detached state in a way that works even if the terminal that started the program closes, and it's as simple as
d <command>.good idea, I've been manually typing out variations of this as needed for years.
Shouldn't you end with
& disownto fully detach?IIRC
disownis a shell built-in command, so its use is a bit limited. Not sure if&is also a built-in, but I founddisownto not work in some situations. Besides, it's shorter.After looking into it a bit more, its at least a builtin for
bashbut is otherwise not POSIX. I guessnohup ... &would be the POSIX compliant equivalent, though still not a builtin.Its my understanding that
&backgrounds, not necessarily detaches, a process -- if the parent process closes, I think the background tasks would still bewait()ed on, if only using&.How does this even work? I get the redirection part, but how is the command executed in a detached state?
()creates a subshell, and&runs the command in background. The$@means everything after the first argument, so the<command>is executed like a normal command. I am not sure why this works, but it has worked more consistently thannohup,disown, and it's a lot shorter than most other solutions.the last & is like doing "command &". d is a function that takes argument and $@ is usually the first argument