Question

I have a script that does some processing and then will call another relevant script. This second script may not be the same each time.

How do I call the second script from bash and have my first script wait until it is finished before it continues. I also want to run the second script in its own window.

Currently I have:

gnome-terminal -x sh second.sh

But the first script continues whilst second is running.

Answer 1

Your problem here is not with bash (which processes commands in sequence unless you explicitly tell it not to using &), it’s with gnome-terminal, which hands off your execution request to a background process and then terminates the one you called.

As far as I can tell, there is no way to get gnome-terminal to behave differently. An alternative might be to use xterm, which is synchronous by default.