Using the -i option to preload a file in the REPL appears to hang its startup. The following terminal session says it all:

daniel@edi ~ λ cat > /tmp/test.scala
println("hello!")
val test = 42

daniel@edi ~ λ scala -i /tmp/test.scala
Loading /tmp/test.scala...


daniel@edi ~ λ

It doesn't seem to matter what the contents of the file happen to be. Even an empty file is sufficient to reproduce this behavior. This happens for me both with 2.9.1.final, and a (slightly outdated) build of 2.10 from master. Exact environment details given in the ticket attributes.