SHELL

SHELL macroname macroarguments

The SHELL command starts a new STx shell (i.e., a new STx command interpreter) to run the macro macroname.

The macro source code macroname must be loaded (see LOAD)The macroarguments passed to the macro are stored in the variable #ARGV of the called macro. Because of the special command-line processing in STx, all string replacements are applied to and all special parsing information (e.g. quotation marks) are removed from macroarguments before it is assigned to #ARGV.

For information about macro definitions (header) and argument parsing see the Script Programming in STx. Many macros use the call-format: name command arguments (e.g. MSGBOX MSG text). If you want to pass quoted arguments to such a macro, use the format MSGBOX 'MSG text' instead of MSGBOX MSG 'text'. This is necessary because the argument string MSG 'text' is passed (after command-line processing) as MSGtext to the macro.If a new shell is called to run a macro, the id (8 hex digits) is assigned to the variable #SHELL of the caller. In the new shell, the variable SHELL is set to 'this_shellid caller_shellid'. The two variables can be used to identify the shells in communication messages.It is not necessary to use the command MACRO explicitly, because the interpreter tries to execute all 'non-shell' commands as a macro. This means the command line MACRO macroname is equivalent to command line macroname.