Introduction

The sed stream editor is a text editor that performs editing operations on information coming from standard input or a file. Sed edits line-by-line and in a non-interactive way.

This means that you make all of the editing decisions as you are calling the command and sed will execute the directions automatically. This may seem confusing or unintuitive, but it is a very powerful and fast way to transform text.

This tutorial will cover some basics operations and introduce you to the syntax required to operate this editor. You will almost certainly never replace your regular text editor with sed, but it will probably become a welcomed addition to your text editing toolbox. Continue reading The Basics of Using the Sed Stream Editor to Manipulate Text in Linux →

Introduction

In this guide, we’ll talk about how bash, the Linux system, and your terminal come together to offer process and job control. In a previous guide, we discussed how the ps, kill, and nice commands can be used to control processes on your system.

This article will focus on managing foreground and background processes and will demonstrate how to leverage your shell’s job control functions to gain more flexibility in how you run commands.

Managing Foreground Processes

Most processes that you start on a Linux machine will run in the foreground. The command will begin execution, blocking use of the shell for the duration of the process. The process may allow user interaction or may just run through a procedure and then exit. Any output will be displayed in the terminal window by default. We’ll discuss the basic way to manage foreground processes below.

Starting a Process

By default, processes are started in the foreground. Until the program exits or changes state, you will not be able to interact with the shell.

Some foreground commands exit very quickly and return you to a shell prompt almost immediately. For instance, this command: Continue reading Use Bash’s Job Control to Manage Foreground and Background Processes →