Is it possible for bash commands to continue before the result of the previous command?

Question

When running commands from a bash script, does bash always wait for the previous command to complete, or does it just start the command then go on to the next one?

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Answer 1

Unless you explicitly tell bash to start a process in the background, it will wait until the process exits. So if you write this:

foo args &

bash will continue without waiting for foo to exit. But if you don't explicitly put the process in the background, bash will wait for it to exit.

Technically, a process can effectively put itself in the background by forking a child and then exiting. But since that technique is used primarily by long-lived processes, this shouldn't affect you.