This is in the category of "not really a bug, but just annoying" and probably also in "It's been around for so long, that it is probably been elevated into a feature".
The problem is that if you use ^Z a lot (as I do) to create jobs and then put them in the background, you end up with many jobs as displayed by the "jobs -l" command. The problem is that when you then create a new job, it may not get the lowest available job number. Repro: $ sleep 1000 & $ sleep 1000 & $ sleep 1000 & $ jobs -l (displays 3 jobs, numbered 1, 2, 3) $ kill %1 $ jobs -l (displays 2 jobs, numbered 2, 3) $ sleep 1000 & $ jobs -l (displays 3 jobs, numbered 2, 3, 4) $ And, in fact, you can't get a new job to be numbered #1 again unless/until you get rid of all of them and start over. I find this annoying because if job #1 exits for some reason (including my accidentally killing it), I can't get things back to the way they were before (other than by getting rid of all the jobs and starting over). In particular, this means I have to re-train myself to refer to the new job as %4, when I had been used to referring to it as %1. I would like to see this fixed. ================================================================================= Please do not send me replies to my posts on the list. I always read the replies via the web archive, so CC'ing to me is unnecessary. When responding to my posts, please try to refrain from giving bureaucratic answers. If you have nothing useful to say, then just click Next and go on.
