Solaris

The '.' refers to the current directory. The '/' is either a directory separator or a way to ensure we are referring to a directory and not a file.

By itself, './' and '.' will do the same thing, since the current directory is always a directory. So 'ls .' and 'ls ./' will do the same thing.

However, if you want to refer to the file 'foo' in the current directory, you need the '/' as a directory separator. So you would use './foo'.

The reason you need to put a './' on the beginning to run a program from the current directory is for security. If I could create a program called 'ls' and get you to 'cd' to my directory and type 'ls', I could get you to run a malicious program.

So if you want to run a program from the current directory, most shells by default force you to indicate so specifically. You can override this by added '.' to the list of directories tested for executables (the 'PATH' environment variable) but that's probably not a good idea.

Originally Posted by Nakul_sh

make the file script.sh executable by changing its file permissions.
Use following command for this.

Code:

chmod 777 script.sh

Then you can execute it by

Code:

sh script.sh