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

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.
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NAME

12       dot — execute commands in the current environment
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SYNOPSIS

15       . file
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DESCRIPTION

18       The shell shall execute commands from the file in the current  environ‐
19       ment.
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21       If file does not contain a <slash>, the shell shall use the search path
22       specified by PATH to find the directory containing file.  Unlike normal
23       command  search, however, the file searched for by the dot utility need
24       not be executable. If no readable  file  is  found,  a  non-interactive
25       shell  shall  abort; an interactive shell shall write a diagnostic mes‐
26       sage to standard error, but this condition shall not  be  considered  a
27       syntax error.
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OPTIONS

30       None.
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OPERANDS

33       See the DESCRIPTION.
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STDIN

36       Not used.
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INPUT FILES

39       See the DESCRIPTION.
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ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES

42       See the DESCRIPTION.
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ASYNCHRONOUS EVENTS

45       Default.
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STDOUT

48       Not used.
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STDERR

51       The standard error shall be used only for diagnostic messages.
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OUTPUT FILES

54       None.
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EXTENDED DESCRIPTION

57       None.
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EXIT STATUS

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

67       Default.
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69       The following sections are informative.
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APPLICATION USAGE

72       None.
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EXAMPLES

75       cat foobar
76       foo=hello bar=world
77       . ./foobar
78       echo $foo $bar
79       hello world
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RATIONALE

82       Some older implementations searched the current directory for the file,
83       even if the value of PATH disallowed it. This behavior was omitted from
84       this  volume of POSIX.1‐2017 due to concerns about introducing the sus‐
85       ceptibility to trojan horses that the user might be trying to avoid  by
86       leaving dot out of PATH.
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88       The  KornShell  version of dot takes optional arguments that are set to
89       the positional parameters.  This is a valid extension that allows a dot
90       script to behave identically to a function.
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FUTURE DIRECTIONS

93       None.
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SEE ALSO

96       Section 2.14, Special Built-In Utilities, return
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99       Portions  of  this text are reprinted and reproduced in electronic form
100       from IEEE Std 1003.1-2017, Standard for Information Technology --  Por‐
101       table  Operating System Interface (POSIX), The Open Group Base Specifi‐
102       cations Issue 7, 2018 Edition, Copyright (C) 2018 by the  Institute  of
103       Electrical  and  Electronics Engineers, Inc and The Open Group.  In the
104       event of any discrepancy between this version and the original IEEE and
105       The  Open Group Standard, the original IEEE and The Open Group Standard
106       is the referee document. The original Standard can be  obtained  online
107       at http://www.opengroup.org/unix/online.html .
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109       Any  typographical  or  formatting  errors that appear in this page are
110       most likely to have been introduced during the conversion of the source
111       files  to  man page format. To report such errors, see https://www.ker
112       nel.org/doc/man-pages/reporting_bugs.html .
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116IEEE/The Open Group                  2017                              DOT(1P)
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