Hiding command output

[Julius Hamilton]

Hey,

I would like to find ways to hide any process at the command line which
takes time to load, even short times.

The "&" was more or less perfect for my needs, but it returns a message
after the process completes.

I'm looking for ways to hide the process entirely.

Richard Stallman showed me ">& /dev/null", which worked for a command like
"echo", but not for a command like "pydoc curses > file.txt". In the latter
case, the command executes normally, leaving a blank shell prompt while it
executes. I.e., it doesn't return to the shell immediately.

If anyone could help me with this, I'd really appreciate it.

I'd also be curious to know if there'd be some way to launch a Python shell
in the background, so it's already live, then bring it to the foreground
when one desires?

Thanks very much,
Julius