Tandy 1000 Basic Reference Manual page 308

Chapter 10 I BASIC Keywords
SHELL
Advanced Statement
SHELL [command]
Loads and executes another program (.EXE or .COW or an in-
ternal command as a child process to the original program.
After the child process ends, control returns to the BASIC pro-
gram a t the statement following the SHELL statement.
Command
is a string expression containing the name of the pro-
gram you want to run. You may also specify command argu-
ments on the command line. Use a space to separate arguments
from the program name. If you omit
command,
SHELL transfers
control t o COMMAND. You can now execute MS-DOS commands
as allowed by COMMAND. To return to BASIC, use the MS-
DOS EXIT command.
SHELL sends the
command
information to COMMAND.COM,
the MS-DOS command processor. If you omit the extension in
the program name, COMMAND looks for the program with a
.COM extension, then with a n
.EXE
extension and finally with a
.BAT extension. If COMMAND still cannot find the program, it
issues a "File not found" error to SHELL.
Note: Do not specify BASIC as the command string of
SHELL. If you do, BASIC might not function properly.
For more information on child processes and COMMAND.COM,
see the MS-DOS Reference
and the
Programmer's Reference
man-
uals for your computer. They are available through your Radio
Shack Computer Store.
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