dot(1p) — Linux manual page

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.1‐2017 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         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 1003.1-2017, 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)

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