The interactive shell used to execute commands and run programs. Launched by init.

Command line entry

The rocketsh shell supports command line editing. You may use the cursor LEFT and RIGHT keys plus HOME and END to navigate in the current line and edit it, inserting into the line if neccessary.

Alternately, you can use the cursor UP and DOWN keys to move through the history of recently entered commands. If you edit one of these commands or send it, it will be inserted into the history again as the latest command.

The history buffer will grow as needed to accomodate as many history items as you enter.

Pressing ESC will abort the current line entry, clearing its contents and advancing down to the line below.

These interactive line editing facilities are also available to any other BASIC programs via the ansi library.

Rocket Shell Commands

The rocketsh shell supports two forms of input; firstly any command you type is searched for as a program under the /programs directory. If it can be found it is executed. The path under which rocketsh searches for programs to run can be changed, as shown below.

If no matching program can be found, the line is passed to EVAL instead and any changes to the program state will be inherited by rocketsh, including documented variables below.

Stopping running programs

Any running program may be stopped by pressing CTRL+ESC at any time. This will raise an error in the program and if it does not trap the error, it will be ended. Errors of this nature in rocketsh are gracefully handled, and will end entry of the current command line.

Shell Variables

The rocketsh shell has several documented variables, which can be set via the command prompt. These are:

PROMPT$

Change PROMPT$ to change the shell prompt from the default of ROCKETSH to the specified value. ANSI escape sequences are supported. You can use CHR$(27) to insert the escape chracter:

PROMPT$ = CHR$(27) + "[31mRED PROMPT" + CHR$(27) + "[37m"

and this will set the shell prompt to dark red:

PATH$

The directory to search in for programs ran at the command prompt. It defaults to /programs.

PATH$ = "/harddisk/progs"

GLOBAL LIB$

The GLOBAL variable LIB$ is the path that programs will use to load libraries from within BASIC. It defaults to /programs/libraries and is set from within /programs/init and passed down to rocketsh.

You must remember the GLOBAL prefix if you wish for this value to be inherited by BASIC programs.

GLOBAL LIB$ = "/harddisk/progs/lib"

EDhist$(x)

Returns a value from the edit history. Each time a line is typed into rocketsh it is stored into the edit history, with the most recent line stored at array index 0.

EDhistPtr

Returns the last array index in the edit history array which contains valid data.