Invoking the ISPF shell

You can invoke the ISPF shell in one of the following ways:

Type the TSO/E command: ISHELL [-d] [pathname]
See Entering a TSO/E command for information about entering TSO/E commands in TSO/E, the shell, and ISPF.
Select the ISPF shell from the ISPF menu, if a menu option is installed.

The optional pathname parameter specifies the initial path name that you want to appear on the ISHELL main panel.

Example: The following command invokes the ISPF shell and supplies the path name /tmp/ on the ISHELL main panel:

ishell /tmp/

Guidelines: When invoking the ISPF shell, follow these guidelines:

ISHELL can be invoked with the option –d, which prevents ISHELL from suppressing ISPF severe dialog errors. This will cause ISHELL to terminate on errors. This option should only be used at the direction of an IBM® technical support representative.
The environment variable BPXWISHTZ can be set to a time zone value to have ISHELL use a local time zone that is different than your TZ setting. BPXWISHTZ must be specified in /etc/profile or in .profile. For example, if the TZ setting does not specify GMT, to allow ISHELL users to return to GMT add the following line to etc/profile or .profile:
```
export BPXWISHTZ=GMT
```
For more information about using the SMFPRMxx parmlib member to specify timeouts, see z/OS UNIX System Services Planning.
Since ISHELL contains code to run the TSO commands OGET and OPUT, these commands should not be included in the PLATCMD area of any IKTSOxx member in effect. Doing so will result in a delay in exiting ISHELL, especially if a copy operation has been performed in the ISHELL session. In general, none of the z/OS UNIX TSO commands should be listed as PLATCMD entries. For more information, see z/OS UNIX System Services Planning.