2.1 Shell Command Line Arguments

When you start up LUX then any text on the command line after the command name that starts LUX (probably lux) is passed to LUX as if you typed it at the LUX> prompt. Just remember that such text may be changed by the shell before it is passed on to LUX, just like any other shell arguments.

For instance, if you invoke LUX as follows:

 lux @file

then – assuming the shell does not modify the argument – LUX starts up and starts reading input from the file, just like if you typed lux, waited for the LUX> prompt, and then typed @file.

The quote (’) character is removed by most shells, so invocations such as

 lux type,'alpha'

will pass the statement type,alpha to LUX, which generates an error because no variable named alpha is defined when LUX first starts. In this case, to pass quotes to LUX, you can enclose the whole argument list between double quotes ("), or prepend backslashes (\) to the quotes; i.e.,

 lux type,\'alpha\'

and

 lux "type,'alpha'"

should work. The latter form is better, because it also protects some other characters that are special to the shell from being modified.