How to run processes in parallel?

Shell Programming and Scripting
1

In a korn shell script, how can I run several processes in parallel at the same time?

For example, I have 3 processes say p1, p2, p3

if I call them as
p1.ksh
p2.ksh
p3.ksh

they will run after one process finishes. But I want to run them in parallel and want to display "Process p1 completed... etc." after each process finishes.

How can I do that?

Thanks in advance

2

You could make them run in background.

p1.ksh &
p2.ksh &
p3.ksh &

3

Thanks for the reply.

Yes it would run in background but still sequencially instead of in parallel.

4

We must be missing something here.

Unless those processes need to be precisely synchronized with each other somehow, running in the background is as close to 'parallel' as you will get.

We have multi-cpu boxes (say 10 cpu) - we start off 10 processes that each work on 1/10 of the dataset. We think of this as parallel, even though it is not.

Maybe you should explain your problem a little more.