The -hetcki switch causes A-Shell to treat "tcki" (check for keyboard input without waiting) operations equivalently to normal wait-for-keyboard operations, when deciding whether to terminate a session that has previously lost its terminal connection. Without this switch (or any other switch starting with –h), a process that has lost its terminal connection due to a disconnect will become a background daemon and continue to run until it stops to wait for input. At that point, a BASIC error #250 will be generated. Merely checking for keyboard input without waiting—aka performing a "tcki"—would not have any effect on the program.

Since the decision on whether a tcki operation should abort a program which has lost its connection may depend on the program, and therefore change during a session.