When a program is started from the Shell (or a Shell script), standard startup modules will parse the command line (received in A0, with length in D0) into an array of pointers to individual argument strings placing them in argv, and an argument count in argc. If a program is started from the Shell, argc will always equal at least one and the first element in argv will always be a pointer to the command name. Other command line arguments are stored in turn. For example, if the command line was: df0:myprogram "my file1" file2 ;this is a comment then argc will be 3, argv[0] will be "df0:myprogram", argv[1] will be "my file1", and argv[2] will be "file2". Correct startup code will strip spaces between arguments and trailing spaces from the last argument and will also properly deal with quoted arguments with embedded spaces. As with Workbench, standard startup code for the Shell sets up sysbase, the pointer to the Exec master library, and opens the DOS library setting up dosbase. c applications that are linked with standard startup code can call an Exec or AmigaDOS functions without opening the library first. The startup code also fills in the stdio file handles (_stdin, _stdout, etc.) for the application. Finally argv and argc, are pushed onto the stack and the application is called via a JSR. When the application returns or exits back to the startup code, the startup code closes and frees all opens and allocations it has made for the application, and then returns to the system with the whatever value the program exited with. Link your applications only with standard, tested startup code of some type such as the module supplied with your compiler. Startup code provides your programs with correct, consistent handling of Shell command line and Workbench arguments and will perform some initializations and cleanups which would otherwise need to be handled by your own code. Very small startups can be used for programs that do not require command line arguments. A few words of warning for those of you who do not use standard startup code: * If you are started as a Workbench process, you must getmsg() the wbstartup message before using any functions in the dos library. * You must turn off task switching (with forbid()) before replying the wbstartup message from workbench. this will prevent workbench from unloading your code before you can exit properly. * If you do your own command line parsing, you must provide the user with consistent and correct handling of command line arguments.