you can put two or more commands on the same line separated by the semicolon. … All the commands will be executed sequentially waiting for each command to finish before starting the new one.

What does semicolon do in shell script?

A semicolon or ampersand ( ; or & ) in a shell script is a command terminator. You can’t use it if it doesn’t follow a command. ; means “run the preceding command in the foreground” and & means “run the preceding command in the background”. A newline in a shell script is a “weak” command terminator.

What does a semicolon mean in Bash?

When the shell sees a semicolon (;) on a command line, it’s treated as a command separator — basically like pressing the ENTER key to execute a command. … You’ll see all of them on the same command line and they’ll be grouped together in the history list (Section 30.7).