1DOT(1P) POSIX Programmer's Manual DOT(1P)
2
6 This manual page is part of the POSIX Programmer's Manual. The Linux
7 implementation of this interface may differ (consult the corresponding
8 Linux manual page for details of Linux behavior), or the interface may
9 not be implemented on Linux.
10
13 dot — execute commands in the current environment
14
16 . file
17
19 The shell shall execute commands from the file in the current environ‐
20 ment.
21 If file does not contain a <slash>, the shell shall use the search path
23 specified by PATH to find the directory containing file. Unlike normal
24 command search, however, the file searched for by the dot utility need
25 not be executable. If no readable file is found, a non-interactive
26 shell shall abort; an interactive shell shall write a diagnostic mes‐
27 sage to standard error, but this condition shall not be considered a
28 syntax error.
29
31 None.
32
34 See the DESCRIPTION.
35
37 Not used.
38
40 See the DESCRIPTION.
41
43 See the DESCRIPTION.
44
46 Default.
47
49 Not used.
50
52 The standard error shall be used only for diagnostic messages.
53
55 None.
56
58 None.
59
61 If no readable file was found or if the commands in the file could not
62 be parsed, and the shell is interactive (and therefore does not abort;
63 see Section 2.8.1, Consequences of Shell Errors), the exit status shall
64 be non-zero. Otherwise, return the value of the last command executed,
65 or a zero exit status if no command is executed.
66
68 Default.
69 The following sections are informative.
71
73 None.
74
76 cat foobar
77 foo=hello bar=world
78 . ./foobar
79 echo $foo $bar
80 hello world
81
83 Some older implementations searched the current directory for the file,
84 even if the value of PATH disallowed it. This behavior was omitted from
85 this volume of POSIX.1‐2008 due to concerns about introducing the sus‐
86 ceptibility to trojan horses that the user might be trying to avoid by
87 leaving dot out of PATH.
88 The KornShell version of dot takes optional arguments that are set to
90 the positional parameters. This is a valid extension that allows a dot
91 script to behave identically to a function.
92
94 None.
95
97 Section 2.14, Special Built-In Utilities, return
98
100 Portions of this text are reprinted and reproduced in electronic form
101 from IEEE Std 1003.1, 2013 Edition, Standard for Information Technology
102 -- Portable Operating System Interface (POSIX), The Open Group Base
103 Specifications Issue 7, Copyright (C) 2013 by the Institute of Electri‐
104 cal and Electronics Engineers, Inc and The Open Group. (This is
105 POSIX.1-2008 with the 2013 Technical Corrigendum 1 applied.) In the
106 event of any discrepancy between this version and the original IEEE and
107 The Open Group Standard, the original IEEE and The Open Group Standard
108 is the referee document. The original Standard can be obtained online
109 at http://www.unix.org/online.html .
110 Any typographical or formatting errors that appear in this page are
112 most likely to have been introduced during the conversion of the source
113 files to man page format. To report such errors, see https://www.ker‐
114 nel.org/doc/man-pages/reporting_bugs.html .
115IEEE/The Open Group 2013 DOT(1P)