DOT(1) General Commands Manual DOT(1)

dot — execute commands in the current environment

file .... file

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 normal command search, however, the file searched for by the dot utility need not be executable. If no readable file is found, a non-interactive shell shall abort; an interactive shell shall write a diagnostic message to standard error, but this condition shall not be considered a syntax error.

None.

See the DESCRIPTION.

Not used.

See the DESCRIPTION.

See the DESCRIPTION.

Default.

Not used.

The standard error shall be used only for diagnostic messages.

None.

None.

Returns the value of the last command executed, or a zero exit status if no command is executed.

Default.

None.

cat foobar
foo=hello bar=world. foobar
echo $foo $bar
hello world

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 (“POSIX.1”) due to concerns about introducing the susceptibility to trojan horses that the user might be trying to avoid by leaving 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.

None.

xcu_chap02(1)

IEEE Std 1003.1-2001 (“POSIX.1”)/Cor 1-2002, item XCU/TC1/D6/5 is applied so that the reference page sections use terms as described in the Utility Description Defaults ( xcu_chap01(1) ). No change in behavior is intended.

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December 6, 2001 posix.fail