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

None.

STDIN

None.

INPUT FILES

None.

ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES

None.

ASYNCHRONOUS EVENTS

None.

STDOUT

None.

STDERR

The standard error shall be used only for diagnostic messages.

OUTPUT FILES

None.

EXTENDED DESCRIPTION

None.

EXIT STATUS

Returns the value of the last command executed, or a zero exit status if no command is executed.

CONSEQUENCES OF ERRORS

None.

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 IEEE Std 1003.1-2001 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

Special Built-In Utilities

CHANGE HISTORY

None.