What is the effect of pressing Ctrl+Z while a process runs in the foreground?

• A. Terminate the process
• B. Pause the process and move it to the background
• C. Shutdown the system
• D. Restart the process

Answer: (B)

Pressing Ctrl+Z sends a stop signal to the currently running foreground process. This pauses (suspends) the process and returns control to the shell, placing the task in the background in a stopped state. It’s not terminated, so the program can be resumed later—use bg to run it in the background or fg to bring it back to the foreground, and jobs to see its status. This is different from Ctrl+C, which terminates with a interrupt signal, and from any action that would shut down or restart the system.