shell(1F)           (Form and Menu Language Interpreter)          shell(1F)

NAME
     shell - run a command using shell

SYNOPSIS
     shell command [command] ...

DESCRIPTION
     The shell function concatenates its arguments, separating each by a
     space, and passes this string to the Reliant UNIX system shell ($SHELL
     if set, otherwise /usr/bin/sh).

EXAMPLES
     Since the Form and Menu Language does not directly support background
     processing, the shell function can be used instead.

          `shell "build prog > /dev/null &"`

     If you want the user to continue to be able to interact with the
     application while the background job is running, the output of an exe-
     cutable run by shell in the background must be redirected: to a file
     if you want to save the output or to /dev/null if you don't want to
     save it (or if there is no output); otherwise your application may
     appear to be hung until the background job finishes processing.

     shell can also be used to execute a command that has the same name as
     an FMLI built-in function.

NOTES
     The arguments to shell will be concatenated using spaces, which may or
     may not do what is expected. The variables set in local environments
     will not be expanded by the shell because local means local to the
     current process.

SEE ALSO
     sh(1).




















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