Question

I often do this:

$ gitk &

To start a program (like gitk in this case, but it doesn`t matter which) and get back to the shell prompt to continue working in the same shell. How would you go about it, after you already wrote

$ gitk

without the &? Is there a key combination like ^z, that puts the process in the background but without interrupting it?

Answer 1

If you have started the process without &, it’ll run in the foreground. Press Ctrl+Z which will stop the process, then enter the command bg to resume the process execution in background.