The LS48 command loop reads Scheme expressions, evaluates them, and prints their results. It also executes commands, which are identified by an initial comma character. Type the command ,help to receive a list of available commands.
The -h option causes heapsize words to be allocated for both semispaces of the copying garbage collector. One word is four bytes. Cons cells are currently 3 words, so if you want to make sure you can allocate, say, a million cons cells, you should specify -h 6000000 (actually a little more, to account for the initial heap image and breathing room).
The ,dump and ,build commands put heap images in files. The -i option causes the initial heap image to be taken from file image. The -a option causes a string to be passed as the argument to an image generated using the ,build command.
> ,build (lambda (a) (display a) (newline)) foo.image > ,exit $ LS48 -i foo.image -a mumble mumble $
max and min don't do inexact contagion.