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How do I make sure I get notified when the job is done?

Here is what I'm running:

$ time find -exec chmod o-r '{}' \+&

I would like to know how long the job took and be notified when it is done.

I thought of doing this:

$ time ls -l 2>&1 | write buttlebutkus pts/0&

(Using ls -l to do a quick test)

But the result was kind of weird. Though it did seem to essentially work, but I'm afraid maybe only because the ls sent an EOF to the write.


I just tried this:

$ time find -exec chmod o-r '{}' \+ 2>&1 | write buttlebutkus pts/0&

Now I am seeing millions of pages of output and cannot get away from it with either ctrl-z or ctrl-c.

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1 Answer 1

up vote 2 down vote accepted
$ time find -exec chmod o-r '{}' \+ 2>&1 && write buttlebutkus pts/0 &

man bash

   The control operators && and ││ denote AND lists and OR lists, respectively.  An AND list has the form

          command1 && command2

   command2 is executed if, and only if, command1 returns an exit status of zero.
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Brilliant! I was going to ask you why &&. Thank you for adding the quote from man bash. I would have never thought of using that operator. Perfect! –  Buttle Butkus Sep 26 '12 at 5:12
By the way, am I interpreting the 2>&1 correctly? Do I even need that for this to work? If you have any link that helps explain that syntax I would appreciate that too. –  Buttle Butkus Sep 26 '12 at 5:14
2>&1 means that redirect stderr to stdout, and display both on the terminal. –  quanta Sep 26 '12 at 5:21

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