centos man page for dot

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

PROLOG
       This  manual page is part of the POSIX Programmer's Manual.  The Linux implementation of this interface may differ (consult the correspond-
       ing Linux manual page for details of Linux behavior), or the interface may not be implemented on Linux.

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  nor-
       mal  command search, however, the file searched for by the dot utility need not be executable. If no readable file is found, a non-interac-
       tive 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
       See the DESCRIPTION.

STDIN
       Not used.

INPUT FILES
       See the DESCRIPTION.

ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES
       See the DESCRIPTION.

ASYNCHRONOUS EVENTS
       Default.

STDOUT
       Not used.

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
       Default.

       The following sections are informative.

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  try-
       ing 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

COPYRIGHT
       Portions of this text are reprinted and reproduced in electronic form from IEEE Std 1003.1, 2003 Edition, Standard for Information Technol-
       ogy -- Portable Operating System Interface (POSIX), The Open Group Base Specifications Issue 6, Copyright (C) 2001-2003 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 .

IEEE
/The Open Group						       2003								   DOT(1P)