Re: When/why does the shell (bash) (sometimes) not re-cycle job IDs?

On 12.05.2024 18:51, Kenny McCormack wrote:

In article <v1qr6l$2qsv6$1@dont-email.me>,
Janis Papanagnou  <janis_papanagnou+ng@hotmail.com> wrote:
...

Job numbers are reused after it has notified you of termination of the
previous job. At least in Bash.

>
Also the same behavior in Ksh, ever since I can remember; lowest job
number "available" gets re-used first. (Where "available" means that
its finishing status has been reported and not that the job finished.)

>
Nope.  Sorry.

>
I read that as "in Bash it's not the case". - Can't tell; I can just
say that what LDO was claiming for Bash at least is the behavior for
Ksh. (You are not arguing that Ksh would behave differently, do you?)

 
You said that it does the right thing in ksh (*).  LDO claimed
(incorrectly) that it does the right thing in bash.  You then claimed that
it does the same thing in ksh as in bash, which is, clearly, incorrect.
Hence my Nope, Sorry.

I was assuming that LDO made a correct claim. But all I wanted to say
was that ksh is doing what LDO was describing. It wasn't my intention
to give the impression that I verified what Bash would do - Bash is
not the shell I am using.

 
(*) I have, just now, verified that it does the right thing in ksh - that
is, whatever version of ksh was laying around on this system for me to test
with.

Not sure what the Right Thing would be. After all (for me) the choice
of %n is no more or less "right" than the choice of PIDs are; all I
need is certainty about validity in certain instances of time, not so
much whether or when the numbering is reused, restarted from 1.

Is there any practical problem I'm unaware about?

Janis

 
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