Hi:

there is a shell script, with the name "foo", located in a bin directory. in the same time, there is an alias "foo='/path/bin/foo' ", just for convenience.

in my home directory, there is a different script with name "foo" too. (a modified version.)

while in my home directory, when I do:

>$ cat foo

my local "foo" is displayed, as expected.

but if I do:
>$ source foo,

the common "/path/bin/foo" gets picked up, not my local one, as if the alias "foo" kicks in and substitutes the common "foo" for my local one.

to source my local "foo", I have to explicitly say:

>$ source ./foo

what I don't get is, the "foo" is the filename argument for both "cat" and "source" commands, but why the "foo" alias seemingly kicks in in "source" command, not the "cat" command.

Could any one shed some light on this?

Thanks.

NB Phil

source is command to execute other shell commands, so if you say
source foo
it will try to run the command foo (alias in this case)
If foo is a script why are you using source command to run it....cant you just dot in?
. ./foo

The cat utility is being asked to read a file; the source utility is being asked to execute a file. When you execute a file, lots of additional processing is invoked to find the file to be executed (alias searches, $PATH searches, ...) that is not done when you are just reading a file.

Thanks for all your responses.

I just found this detail info, which confirms your explanation:

". (source or dot operator)

If filename does not contain a slash, the PATH variable is used to find filename. The current directory is searched if filename is not found in $PATH. "