The -q switch tells A-Shell to silence its screen output. This is normally only applicable under UNIX when you want to launch a child session (using XCALL HOSTEX) to perform some quick operation and you don’t want the user to see the resulting screen output. The normal approach, however, to this type of thing is to use the "Q" option in XCALL AMOS, which internally uses the -q switch under UNIX and alternate techniques under Windows.