Suggestion Required

Hi Is it possible in bash scripting to print out some thing while some command is executing ? I am using redirecting command output to /dev/null device. and I want to print out something else like '!' instead of command output. is it possible then how. please guide me? thanks in advanced.

Yes it is possible the "&" operator (without quotes) tells the command to run in the background. Here is a peiece of script that i wrote the other day to show a wait sign whilst a file did not exist... #!/bin/sh loop=0 interval=1 while [ ! -f hahahha.hs ] do clear loop=`expr $loop + 1` case $loop in 1) echo 'Building -' sleep $interval s ;; 2) echo 'Building \' sleep $interval s ;; 3) echo 'Building |' sleep $interval s ;; 4) echo 'Building /' sleep $interval s ;; *) loop=0 ;; esac done