Shell issues

[ahenry3068]

Although I may have answered my own post and it works!?

It doesn't explain the following:

1)why does shell w/o parameter hang?
2)what is the equivalent to CMD in Linux and MacOsX?
3)does or should comspec$ be used?

Thank you, Erik.

There isn't an exact one to one equivalent to CMD in Linux.  Depending on what you want to actually accomplish you want to use either xdg-open or the executable name
of your favorite xterm type program    (xterm, gterm, konsole    etc...)