shift Command shift Shift positional parameters shift Commands to the shell sh can be stored in a file, or script. Positional parameters pass command line information to a script, as described in the article on sh. shift changes the values of positional parameters. The old parameter values $2, $3, ... become the new parameter values $1, $2 .... shift also reduces the value of $#, which gives the num- ber of positional parameters, by one. The shell executes shift directly. ***** See Also ***** commands, sh COHERENT Lexicon Page 1