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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  corresponding
       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  environ-
       ment.
       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 mes-
       sage 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
       If  no readable file was found or if the commands in the file could not
       be parsed, and the shell is interactive (and therefore does not  abort;
       see Section 2.8.1, Consequences of Shell Errors), the exit status shall
       be non-zero. Otherwise, return 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 POSIX.1-2008 due to concerns about introducing the sus-
       ceptibility to trojan horses that the user might be trying 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
       Section 2.14, Special Built-In Utilities, return
COPYRIGHT
       Portions  of  this text are reprinted and reproduced in electronic form
       from IEEE Std 1003.1, 2013 Edition, Standard for Information Technology
       --  Portable  Operating  System  Interface (POSIX), The Open Group Base
       Specifications Issue 7, Copyright (C) 2013 by the Institute of Electri-
       cal  and  Electronics  Engineers,  Inc  and  The  Open Group.  (This is
       POSIX.1-2008 with the 2013 Technical Corrigendum  1  applied.)  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.unix.org/online.html .
       Any typographical or formatting errors that appear  in  this  page  are
       most likely to have been introduced during the conversion of the source
       files to man page format. To report such errors,  see  https://www.ker-
       nel.org/doc/man-pages/reporting_bugs.html .
IEEE/The Open Group                  2013                              DOT(1P)