Talk:LPI Linux Certification/Work On The Command Line

is "." really a unix program or can this be removed?
 * The period is part of the Bourne shell builtin commands the man page describes it thus.

. filename [arguments] source filename [arguments] Read and  execute  commands  from filename in the current shell environment and return the exit status of the last command exe‐ cuted from filename. If filename does not contain a slash, file names in PATH are used to find the directory  containing  file‐ name. The file  searched  for in PATH need not be executable. When bash is not  in  posix  mode,  the  current  directory  is              searched  if no file is found in PATH. If the sourcepath option to the shopt builtin command is turned off,  the  PATH  is  not searched. If any arguments are supplied, they become the posi‐ tional parameters when filename  is  executed. Otherwise the positional parameters  are unchanged. The return status is the status of the last command exited within the script  (0  if  no              commands  are  executed),  and false if filename is not found or              cannot be read.


 * I agree that this was part of the UNIX command set originally, indeed quiet a few commands in Linux come from UNIX origins. I have confirmed that the "." period is part of the LPI exam syllabus, hence it should remain as is. Barry 09:27, 6 November 2007 (UTC)