1. A-Shell no longer complains on startup if the ASTART.CMD file not present. Also, it now looks for ASTART.DO[2,2] and ASTART.LIT[1,4], providing more flexibility for those that do like the feature. As a bit of background, in the 4.6 release, there was no default command line, so if you launched A-Shell without specifying an initial command to execute, it would leave you at the dot prompt with no message, and probably not logged in. Many first-time users found this confusing, so in 4.7 we supplied a default command line of "ASTART" if none was specified, and also included a simple default ASTART.CMD[2,2] that would log you in and display a welcome message. However, if that ASTART.CMD was erased, then the first thing you would see when launching A-Shell without a command line was "?ASTART?", which was somewhat disconcerting. So now we don't display the "?ASTART?" error message if the file is not found (matching the appearance of 4.6), and in addition, it now allows you to use an ASTART.DO[2,2] or ASTART.LIT[1,4] default startup command instead of ASTART.CMD[2,2]. The main advantage of ASTART.DO over ASTART.CMD is that DO files support certain built-in variables (e.g. $NU returns the user login name, $NS returns the operating system name, etc. – see the Command Reference for a complete list). The main advantage of ASTART.LIT would be that you have access to full programming capabilities, and it would be harder for casually mischievous users to tamper with it. Note, however, that in order for a LIT command to run while logged out, you must include the –2 flag on the PROGRAM statement, as shown in this example:
program astart,1.0(100),-2 ! allow to run while logged out
print "Welcome to A-Shell"
xcall LOG,"LOG BAS:" ! log the user in
2. Minor omissions and loose ends in the release package have been cleaned up, mainly in the collection of sample programs which are included in DSK0:[7,376].
