An ampersand does the same thing as a semicolon or newline in that it indicates the end of a command, but it causes Bash to execute the command asynchronously. That means Bash will run it in the background and run the next command immediately after, without waiting for the former to end.

What does & mean in Linux?

The & makes the command run in the background. … If a command is terminated by the control operator &, the shell executes the command in the background in a subshell. The shell does not wait for the command to finish, and the return status is 0.

What is & in bash?

In Bash, on the Linux command line, & is a control operator. It’s a shell builtin meaning it’s literally a core part of the Bash tool set. It crops up in 2 main forms, as a single ampersand & and as a double ampersand &&.