B.4.10 $ - spawn or exit to shell

Execute an operating system command.

xsel >  $ <command_line>

where command_line contains a UNIX command. No parsing of $<$command_line$>$ is done, therefore all the $'s, skipped fields, double quotes etc have the meaning they would in an operating system command.

If the dollar sign is entered with no $<$command_line$>$ the program opens a new shell, and a series of commands can be entered – type exit to get back into XSELECT. Spawning can be disabled by setting the environment variable DISABLE_SPAWN.

Examples:

xsel > $

Spawns a shell.

xsel >  $ls

Lists the contents of the current directory.