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A-Shell Reference

f <optionfile>

The -f switch forces PolyShell to read its command line arguments from the first line of specified file. For example:

pshell –f /vm/miame/pshell.cfg

If the specified file (/vm/miame/pshell.cfg in this example) contained the following:

-x –l2 –t menu

then the first command would have the same effect as if it were:

pshell –x –l2 –t menu

The point of such a redirection, which may not be obvious at first, is twofold. First, it allows you to change the parameters on a global basis by modifying just one file, rather than by modifying each user’s startup profile. Second, even though you could accomplish nearly the same effect by launching pshell from within a script, this method is more efficient since it eliminates the need for a copy of the shell to be launched and then maintained in memory while it waits for the pshell command to exit. This would take up about 60K-100K per user on average, which is perhaps not that significant but is still a complete waste. By using the –f switch as shown above, you get all the benefits of central administration of the pshell startup switches without any of the extra overhead of using a script.