How do you start Unix screen command with a command?

According to the docs for the Unix "screen" command, you can configure it in .screenrc to start with a bunch of default screens, each running a command that you specify.

Here's my cofig:

# Default screens
screen -t "shell_0"  1
screen -t "autotest" 2 cd ~/project/contactdb ; autotest

It will not run the autotest command. That window where I'm trying to run autotest just closes instantly when I start screen.

I also tried it with just...

screen -t "autotest" 2 cd ~/project/contactdb

Same result.

I also tried...

screen -t "autotest" 2 ls

Same result there too.

What's the secret to getting it to run a command in a given screen on startup?

From stackoverflow

• Your program is being run (well, except the cd), it's just that it's being run without a parent shell, so as soon as it completes, it exits and you're done.

  You could do:

  screen -t "autotest" 2 bash -c 'cd ~/project/contactdb ; autotest'
  

  Spawns two shells, but life will probably go on.

• This might help but may not be entirely what you want.

  Put "zombie az" or "defzombie az" as the first line of your .screenrc. "az" can be whatever 2 keys you'd like. Now, when a screen ought to close (command finished executing, for instance), it won't actually close; hitting 'a' will close it, hitting 'z' will re-execute the command attached to that screen.

  I found that at the screen user's manual.

• Here's how mine looks. It seems to work fine. I think either the parenthesis might be causing the problem or screen will not open a window if the command "autotest" does not exist.

  screen -t zsh 1
  screen -t emacs 2 emacs -nw
  screen -t mutt 3 mutt
  monitor on
  screen -t mc 4 mc -s
  screen -t elinks 4 elinks
  

• You can also "stuff" characters into the screen as if you had typed them.

  Here's how you can do that with your example:

  
  screen -t "shell_0"  1
  
  # create the following screen in the desired dir, instead of cd-ing afterwards :)
  chdir ~/project/contactdb
  screen -t "autotest" 2
  
  # (without this sometimes screens fail to start correctly for me)
  sleep 5
  
  # paste some text into screen number 2:
  select 2
  stuff "autotest\012"
  

• try this:

  $ screen -S 'tailf messages' -d -m tailf /var/log/messages

  then later you can do:

  $ screen -ls

  1234.tailf messages

  $screen -r 1234