Shell script to start & daemonise a process. Detaches the process from the console & redirects its output to /dev/null.

dm.sh

#!/bin/bash
function iscmd()
{
  if hash $1 2>/dev/null; then
    return 0
  fi
  return 1
}

iscmd $1

# Confirm command $1 exists
if [ $? -eq 0 ]; then
  # Execute positional parameters ("$@" prevents parameters from
  # breaking; contrast to $*).
  "$@" &> /dev/null &

  # Retain PID of the executed command. $! cannot be directly echoed
  # since it would yield the PID of the echo process.
  PID=$!
  echo "PID:" $PID

  # Successful exit
  exit 0
fi

echo $1 "is not a command."
exit 1