On Fri, 2004-09-03 at 21:14, Deepak Oberoi wrote: > what is the differecne between the following? > . /etc/sysconfig/sendmail > and > ./etc/... (i know if the "." is followed by "/" then > it executes the file but dont know the what it does if > space is present between . and /) > cheers It is a "SHELL BUILTIN", see man bash for details: > . 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 > HTH, --Rob
