Problems with starting/stopping applications

[Leonid Timochouk]

Hello Erlang users,

In Erlang/OTP R8B on Linux, I have noticed the following two problems:

(1) It is NOT possible to start applications by using the "-s"
    or "-run" command-line parameters in "erl", like

    erl -pa some_path -s application start my_application_name permanent

    The "-s" or "-run" parameters simply have no effect, as confirmed by
    using the "-init_debug" option.

    On the other hand, invoking

    application:start (my_application_name, permanent)

    from the Erlang shell starts an application without any problems.

(2) Similarly, calling

    init:stop ()

    from the Erlang shell shuts down all applications and then terminates
    the "beam" emulator, as it should be. But if the same function is
    invoked from within some working process, it only shuts down all
    applications but does not terminate "beam" itself.

Anyone has an idea why this can happen (especially (1))?

Thanks a lot in advance,

Dr Leonid Timochouk
Computing Laboratory
University of Kent at Canterbury, England