Re: child_pid of background process? (not in manpage?)

[dethrophes]

   I actually had that problem as well, I found the description in the end
   it just took longer than I expected.

   Sent from my BlackBerry 10 smartphone.

   From: Linda Walsh
   Sent: Monday, August 19, 2013 19:53
   To: bug-bash
   Subject: Re: child_pid of background process? (not in manpage?)

   Chris Down wrote:
   > On 2013-08-18 17:46, Linda Walsh wrote:
   >> I don't find the variable for the process ID of the
   >> last started background process documented in the bash manpage...
   >>
   >> Am I just missing it, or did it get left out by accident or
   >> where did it go?
   >
   > First of all, it would help if you gave your version. At least in
   4.2.45, it's
   > under "Special Parameters".
   >
   >> Special Parameters
   >>
   >> [...]
   >>
   >> ! Expands to the process ID of the most recently executed
   >> background (asynchronous) command.
   ---
   That explains it... There's -- in searching the output, I'm
   pretty sure that seeing a stray '!' in the left hand margin
   wouldn't have looked like a var.
   In this case, especially for the 1 char vars, wouldn't it be
   easier to help people see them and help them search for them
   if they included the '$' before them so they wouldn't look
   like stray punctuation? or so I could search on \$[^a-zA-Z0-0]
   and find it?
   It would make finding it alot easier for people skimming or
   searching for it. (Not that, it isn't technically accurate,
   but searching for a single '!' as the name of a var in
   text doc, might lead to quite a few false positives?
   (im in V4.2.x bash, BTW,...sorry)