Passing a parameter to a shell script?

UNIX AIX
1

I would like to run a compress script on files in certain directories.

My compress_script.sh is just basically

compress file*

In order for me to use this I have to copy it into each directory and run it.
How can I state the directory on the command line with the compress script so it compress all the files in the directory I state on the command line without having to copy the script into each directory. I think I can pass the directory name as a parameter? Thanks in advance.

2 
#!/bin/ksh
# $1 = path
compress $(find "$1" -type f)

usage: ./smash.sh /path/to/files

3

Thanks but before I read your reply, I did something like this:

more compress.sh
>compress $1/FILE.*

Command Prompt# nohup compress.sh <directory name> 2>&1 &

And it worked, is there something not efficient about the way I did this?