shellunix

What does "&" at the end of a linux command mean?

I am a system administrator and I have been asked to run a linux script to clean the system.

The command is this:

perl script.pl > output.log &

so this command is ending with a & sign, is there any special significance of it?

I have basic knowledge of shell but I have never seen this before.

Solution

  • The & makes the command run in the background.

    From man bash:

    If a command is terminated by the control operator &, the shell executes the command in the background in a subshell. [...] The shell does not wait for the command to finish, and the return status is 0 (true). [...]