From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
Message-ID: <13426df10705151629u18d15ea1o2d5d4cab218479a5@mail.gmail.com>
Date: Tue, 15 May 2007 16:29:45 -0700
From: "ron minnich" <rminnich@gmail.com>
To: "Fans of the OS Plan 9 from Bell Labs" <9fans@cse.psu.edu>
Subject: Re: [9fans] A simple rc question
In-Reply-To: <4648BF8D@webmail.snc.edu>
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On 5/15/07, Benn Newman <benn.newman@snc.edu> wrote:
> Duff answered ron's question in "Rc =97 The Plan 9 Shell".
>
>    12. Command grouping
>
>    A sequence of commands enclosed in {} may be used anywhere a command i=
s
>    required. For example:
>
>       {sleep 3600;echo 'Time''s up!'}&
>
>    will wait an hour in the background, then print a message. Without the
>    braces,
>
>       sleep 3600;echo 'Time''s up!'&
>
>    would lock up the terminal for an hour, then print the message in the
>    background.


it does not really answer the question.
cmd ; cmd is two commands.
cmd | cmd is one command.
cmd ; cmd & will background the second command
cmd|cmd & should background both.

Just try this:
sleep 5|wc

and then
sleep 5|wc&

The | forms the two commands into a compound and the compound is background=
ed.

That works fine. But in a for it did not. This did work however:
for(i){{tail -f $i | whatever}&}

ron