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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-24T13:27:56+00:00

i’m fairly new in *nix. Is there a way to create a screen, which

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i’m fairly new in *nix. Is there a way to create a screen, which will immediately execute a given command sequence (with their own arguments)? Two hours of googling yields nothing – perhaps because I can’t
clearly state the question.

I hope for something like

screen -dmS new_screen exec "cd /dir && java -version"

I am using screen v4.00.03 and CentOS 5.5 (kernel ver. 2.6.18-194.26.1.el5.028stab079.2)

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    The problem is that using the ‘exec’ screen command does not start a shell. ‘cd’ is a shell builtin, so you need a shell for it. Also, you need a shell that remains running so that screen does not terminate.

    You can use the -X option to screen to send commands to a running screen session, and the ‘stuff’ command to send keystrokes to the current window. Try this:

    screen -dmS new_screen sh
screen -S new_screen -X stuff "cd /dir
"
screen -S new_screen -X stuff "java -version
"

    Yes, you need to put the quotes on the next line in order for the commands to be executed.

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