foreground-to-background in one go

In a Unix shell, you can background a command with an '&'.  If it's running in the foreground, you can suspend it with ctrl-Z, and then background (unsuspending it) with the "bg" built-in shell command.

That's nice, but even nicer would be if you could do it one go.  Foregrounded to backgrounded in one go doesn't sound like too much to ask, and seems like an obvious idea.

I don't see any need for (Unix) signals in the new feature.  Suspend involves a signal, but we are not doing the suspend.  Is there a ctrl-something available for the user interface?  Do we need to involve the terminal (emulator), or can this just be done in the shell?  Is it already a feature that I don't know about in some shell, or has anyone done it as a demo?  Those are all the questions I can think of.

Incidentally, I've been wondering about trying some pair-working mini projects, defined as: in the first 3 days, set objectives so that the two of you can, with 95% probability, reach them within a month (inclusive), including writing up and publishing.  This idea seems about right for that.

For those unfamiliar, this falls under the topic "job control".

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