Shell Programming and Scripting

Hello all

i have csh script called test.csh , and i need to run it in the background

so i do : test.csh &

but i wander can i tell within the script source to run it in the background automatically , without giving the user to add the "&"

when executing in the shell ?

I'm not sure about the script running itself in the background, I doubt you can do that. You could have your script run all it's commands in the background but that isn't the same as what you're asking.

The simple solution I'd do is just write a one-liner script that calls the real script in the background, then have your user run that. For your real script test.csh, have a script called starttest.sh that goes

#! /bin/sh
/path/to/test.csh &

And you're done.

By the way, not to start a religous war or anything but you are aware csh is very rarely used for scripting because of many flaws with it, right? I'd suggest scripting in sh since it is most portable, or if you need it ksh or bash. Csh is fine for interactive use as your shell if you like it best, but it isn't good for scripting.