Shell Programming and Scripting

I need to create a logical test to see if a job is complete.
I have 4 seperate jobs that will be running in tandem and will create a file indicating the job completed. Once all 4 jobs have completed I will need to execute the final job to execute the final task. The problem I am having is that the 4 jobs may finish at different times, and the last task can not start until the original 4 jobs are completed. I have looked at possibly using a sleep command, but this seems somewhat inefficient. Can a scripting guru give me an idea of a best practice with an example of how to code something like this?

Thanks in advance
NoMadBanker(NMB)

Are the jobs spawned by your current shell (ie are they children of the current process)?

If so you can ues the shells internal wait command. If not you may need to get their process id's and loop around waiting for each process to finish (eg test for /proc/<pid> directory or use "ps -p").

I am expecting all the jobs to be kicked off by the single shell in tandem, but it needs to wait for all the jobs to finish bedfore moving onto the last step.

ie
login
>Execute all 4 jobs
>>wait for all 4 jobs to complete
>execute 5th job to commit/consolidate/report
exit

Try to search the forum first, this is from 2 day's ago: Waiting for the background process to finish - The UNIX and Linux Forums

Thanks,
I will try this and see if this creates the expected outcome I am looking for. Seem straight forward enough but I am certain I may have more questions.

Cheers
NMB

Don't worry, I've seen exactly the same homework few times in the last weeks