PROLOG | NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | OPTIONS | OPERANDS | STDIN | INPUT FILES | ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES | ASYNCHRONOUS EVENTS | STDOUT | STDERR | OUTPUT FILES | EXTENDED DESCRIPTION | EXIT STATUS | CONSEQUENCES OF ERRORS | APPLICATION USAGE | EXAMPLES | RATIONALE | FUTURE DIRECTIONS | SEE ALSO | COPYRIGHT 

DOT(1P)                   POSIX Programmer's Manual                  DOT(1P)

PROLOG         top

       This manual page is part of the POSIX Programmer's Manual.  The Linux
       implementation of this interface may differ (consult the
       corresponding Linux manual page for details of Linux behavior), or
       the interface may not be implemented on Linux.

NAME         top

       dot — execute commands in the current environment

SYNOPSIS         top

       . file

DESCRIPTION         top

       The shell shall execute commands from the file in the current
       environment.
       If file does not contain a <slash>, the shell shall use the search
       path specified by PATH to find the directory containing file.  Unlike
       normal command search, however, the file searched for by the dot
       utility need not be executable. If no readable file is found, a non-
       interactive shell shall abort; an interactive shell shall write a
       diagnostic message to standard error, but this condition shall not be
       considered a syntax error.

OPTIONS         top

       None.

OPERANDS         top

       See the DESCRIPTION.

STDIN         top

       Not used.

INPUT FILES         top

       See the DESCRIPTION.

ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES         top

       See the DESCRIPTION.

ASYNCHRONOUS EVENTS         top

       Default.

STDOUT         top

       Not used.

STDERR         top

       The standard error shall be used only for diagnostic messages.

OUTPUT FILES         top

       None.

EXTENDED DESCRIPTION         top

       None.

EXIT STATUS         top

       If no readable file was found or if the commands in the file could
       not be parsed, and the shell is interactive (and therefore does not
       abort; see Section 2.8.1, Consequences of Shell Errors), the exit
       status shall be non-zero. Otherwise, return the value of the last
       command executed, or a zero exit status if no command is executed.

CONSEQUENCES OF ERRORS         top

       Default.
       The following sections are informative.

APPLICATION USAGE         top

       None.

EXAMPLES         top

       cat foobar
       foo=hello bar=world
       . ./foobar
       echo $foo $bar
       hello world

RATIONALE         top

       Some older implementations searched the current directory for the
       file, even if the value of PATH disallowed it. This behavior was
       omitted from this volume of POSIX.1‐2008 due to concerns about
       introducing the susceptibility to trojan horses that the user might
       be trying to avoid by leaving dot out of PATH.
       The KornShell version of dot takes optional arguments that are set to
       the positional parameters.  This is a valid extension that allows a
       dot script to behave identically to a function.

FUTURE DIRECTIONS         top

       None.

SEE ALSO         top

       Section 2.14, Special Built-In Utilities, return(1p)

COPYRIGHT         top

       Portions of this text are reprinted and reproduced in electronic form
       from IEEE Std 1003.1, 2013 Edition, Standard for Information
       Technology -- Portable Operating System Interface (POSIX), The Open
       Group Base Specifications Issue 7, Copyright (C) 2013 by the
       Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc and The Open
       Group.  (This is POSIX.1-2008 with the 2013 Technical Corrigendum 1
       applied.) In the event of any discrepancy between this version and
       the original IEEE and The Open Group Standard, the original IEEE and
       The Open Group Standard is the referee document. The original
       Standard can be obtained online at http://www.unix.org/online.html .
       Any typographical or formatting errors that appear in this page are
       most likely to have been introduced during the conversion of the
       source files to man page format. To report such errors, see
       https://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/reporting_bugs.html .
IEEE/The Open Group                 2013                             DOT(1P)

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