Here's a hacky way, probably this is the wrong way :).

Instead of passing a filename, you can pass a sequence of commands. So in particular, you could do something like

pdflatex "\def\ishandout{1} \input{foo.tex}" 

And then you can check the value of ishandout (and whether it's defined) inside foo.tex:

\ifdefined\ishandout \documentclass[handout]{beamer} \else \documentclass{beamer} \fi 

Here's a hacky way, probably this is the wrong way :).

Instead of passing a filename, you can pass a sequence of commands. So in particular, you could do something like

pdflatex "\def\ishandout{1} \input{foo.tex}" 

which defines the macro \ishandout (to be 1) and then reads foo.tex. And then, inside foo.tex, you can check whether \ishandout is defined:

\ifdefined\ishandout \documentclass[handout]{beamer} \else \documentclass{beamer} \fi 

Here's a hacky way, probably this is the wrong way :).

Instead of passing a filename, you can pass a sequence of commands. So in particular, you could do something like

pdflatex "\def\param{1} \input{foo.tex}" 

And then you can check the value of param (and whether it's defined) inside foo.tex.

Here's a hacky way, probably this is the wrong way :).

Instead of passing a filename, you can pass a sequence of commands. So in particular, you could do something like

pdflatex "\def\ishandout{1} \input{foo.tex}" 

And then you can check the value of ishandout (and whether it's defined) inside foo.tex:

\ifdefined\ishandout \documentclass[handout]{beamer} \else \documentclass{beamer} \fi