Can a process bring itself back to the foreground on completion? (AIX/ksh)

Question

I have a while loop to count to 5 and echo "Done" when finished. I want to be able to execute the script in the background with "&" and continuing issuing commands while it runs.

But when it's done, I want it make itself the foreground process before echoing "Done". After that, I would expect it to show a new command prompt line. I can just echo "\nDone", and I understand why running it in the background would just print the output and not end/start a new prompt. But I'm wondering if it's possible to basically kind of "merge jobs" back together before ending, and if I could apply that elsewhere, with built-in job control in my scripts.

This is not a practical problem, just curious.

    i=0

    while [ $i -lt 5 ]
    do
        let i+=1
        sleep 1
    done

    fg
    echo "Done"

Answer 1

Nope - Running processes can't do that sort of thing, because they're backgrounded by the shell and its the shell's job to say which process is foregrounded / backgrounded / suspended.

Try this - Remove the fg, and then run your shell script backgrounded (ie with a & on the end) When its finished, the output will be blurted to your console.