Waiting on background tasks

[Erik Christiansen]

On Mon, Apr 10, 2006 at 12:40:39AM -0500, Kenneth P. Turvey wrote:
> Is there a way to start a number of background tasks and then wait for
> them all to complete?  That is I would like something like this:
> 
> longtask arg1 &
> longtask arg2 &
> longtask arg3 &
> waitforalltasks
> #do the next thing

The bash shell has a built-in "wait [n]". From man bash: "If n is not
given, all currently active child processes are waited for, and the
return status is zero."

So just delete "foralltasks" ;-)

Erik