z/OS V1R9.0 UNIX System Services Command ... - Christian Grothoff

. (dot)
. (dot) — Run a shell file in the current environment
Format
Description
Usage notes
Localization
Exit Values
Portability
. file [argument ...]
. (dot) runs a shell script in the current environment and then returns. Normally, the
shell runs a command file in a child shell so that changes to the environment by
such commands as cd, set, and trap are local to the command file. The . (dot)
command circumvents this feature.
If there are slashes in the filename, . (dot) looks for the named file. If there are no
slashes . (dot) searches for file in the directories specified in the PATH variable.
This may surprise some people when they use dot to run a file in the working
directory, but their search rules are not set up to look at the working directory. As a
result, the shell doesn’t find the shell file. If you have this problem, you can use:
. ./file
This indicates that the shell file you want to run is in the working directory. Also, the
file need not be executable, even if it is looked for on the PATH. If you specify an
argument list argument ..., . (dot) sets the positional parameters to the arguments
while running the shell script, then restores the invoker’s positional parameters. If
no argument list is specified, the shell script has the same positional parameters as
the invoker. Any changes made to the positional parameters (e.g. by the set
command) in the shell script remain in effect when the . (dot) command ends.
1. . (dot) is a special built-in shell command.
2. The file specified is treated as a shell script containing shell commands. Files
which are not shell scripts (e.g. REXX execs, executable programs) should not
be specified as file.
. (dot) uses the following localization environment variables:
v LANG
v LC_ALL
v LC_MESSAGES
v NLSPATH
See Appendix F for more information.
1 The path search failed
2 Failure because of an incorrect command-line option
Otherwise, the exit status is the exit status of the last command run from the script.
POSIX.2, X/Open Portability Guide, UNIX systems.
242 z/OS V1R9.0 UNIX System Services Command Reference