dot(1p) — Linux manual page

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

PROLOG

       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

       dot — execute commands in the current environment

SYNOPSIS

       . file

DESCRIPTION

       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

       None.

OPERANDS

       See the DESCRIPTION.

STDIN

       Not used.

INPUT FILES

       See the DESCRIPTION.

ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES

       See the DESCRIPTION.

ASYNCHRONOUS EVENTS

       Default.

STDOUT

       Not used.

STDERR

       The standard error shall be used only for diagnostic messages.

OUTPUT FILES

       None.

EXTENDED DESCRIPTION

       None.

EXIT STATUS

       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

       Default.

       The following sections are informative.

APPLICATION USAGE

       None.

EXAMPLES

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

RATIONALE

       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.1‐2017 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

       None.

SEE ALSO

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

COPYRIGHT

       Portions of this text are reprinted and reproduced in electronic
       form from IEEE Std 1003.1-2017, Standard for Information
       Technology -- Portable Operating System Interface (POSIX), The
       Open Group Base Specifications Issue 7, 2018 Edition, Copyright
       (C) 2018 by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics
       Engineers, Inc and The Open Group.  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.opengroup.org/unix/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               2017                           DOT(1P)

Pages that refer to this page: return(1p)

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