Using Workspaces from the Command Line

Many of the various BeOS applications can be used from the command line, and some will actually do interesting things with command line arguments. This will improve quite a bit in BeOS Release 4 (look for Tips on those once it's shipping), but today, a look at something that works in Release 3: Workspaces.

Workspaces is the application that you normally use to rapidly switch from one Workspace to another, and which allows you to move windows from one Workspace to another. But, from the command line, you can use it to switch to a new Workspace by giving it the number of the Workspace to which you'd like to switch:

Of course, this is only so interesting. Every once in a while you might use this, but the command key shortcuts are easier and faster. Instead, this is useful in a shell script, such as your UserBootscript, to launch applications in a particular Workspace. Here's an example UserBootscript that launches PoorMan in one Workspace, and NetPositive in another: