Subject: bug#4719: 23.1; M-& to run commands asynchronously (async-shell-command)

From: Daniel Clemente <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 13 Oct 2009 17:10:19 -0700 (PDT)

I propose to add a new function, async-shell-command, bound to M-&, which in analogous to shell-command (bound to M-!) but executes the command in the background (as if you had written an ampersand at the end of M-!).
Both functions would respectively correspond to keys ! and & in dired, only that ! and & work only in dired but M-! and M-& would be global (work everywhere).

The code is in this message in an old thread:
http://article.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.devel/111825

There are still some details to decide: how many buffers to open, where to direct STDOUT, whether output should be visible, …

Some modes should be checked since they might be using M-&.