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