What does at the end of a linux command mean

Question

I am a system administrator and I have been asked to run a linux script to clean the system.

The command is this:

perl script.pl > output.log &

so this command is ending with a & sign, is there any special significance of it?

I have basic knowledge of shell but I have never seen this before.

Answer 1

The & makes the command run in the background.

From man bash:

If a command is terminated by the control operator &, the shell executes the command in the background in a subshell. The shell does not wait for the command to finish, and the return status is 0.

Answer 2

it'll start a new child process and run the command in that process

Answer 3

I use it to send a process instantly to the background. To take control of the terminal instance and write commands in the same instance without having to start another one.