Re: running from terminal

[Tim X <timx@nospam.dev.null>]

phillc <spyyderz@gmail.com> writes:

> hi,
> i am using ubuntu (gui) and to start emacs, i open a terminal and type emacs.
> however, that then causes the terminal to stop, rendering it useless, despite
> it still existing, until in cntrl - c out of it.
>
> is there anyway to launch emacs without it being dependant upon the terminal?
>

You ahve things slightly mixed up conceptually. When you open a
terminal, you are in fact using something like xterm, kterm,
gnome-terminal etc, that runs a shell and provides you with an interface
to that shell. 

This means that what you need to look at are the job control
capabilities of the shell you are using. 

Most shells support the concept of running a process in the
background. In most shells this is achieved by appending a '&' to the
command, which tells the shell to run the command in the background and
immediately return the foreground process (i.e. your interactive
shell). Most shells also have command for manipulating processes and
moving them into the forground and background etc. Exactly how depends
on the shell (i.e. bash, zsh, csh, tcsh etc). 

Note also that control-c as a way of quitting a program is a pretty bad
habit. and won't always have the expected result. If you have to do a
ctl-c to exit the terminal you started emacs in, then emacs must still
be running and doing this is likely to kill both emacs and the
terminal. If you exited emacs first, your terminal prompt would return
and you could use logout/exit to close the terminal. 

HTH

Tim


-- 
tcross (at) rapttech dot com dot au