Hi.. im just new to this board so soz if this is a stupid question.

Ive come accross a line of code in my studdies on shell programming, and im stuck on what "exactly" it means..

the particular line of code is:

. /etc/init.d/functions

and the part im curious about is the . / (take note of the white space between the . and the /)

ive tried to derive what this is myself by doing a few test's, and have found that it seems to take a file like a text file (the functions file in this case) and execute it as a shell script.

whats this particular operation called? what exactly does this thing do?

n e way.. any help towards this would be appreciated..

thanks in advance!

Cheers!

Lucas

simple question -- quick answer:

the . is a simple include.

So in your example the textfile /etc/init.d/functions is being included into the file you found your line of code in.

Cheers, Steave.

If you've ever used a csh derivative, the '.' is similar to the 'source' command. It will source in the commands into the current running script or environment.

A good example is when you make a change to your .bashrc/.bash_login , you could run ' . ~/.bashrc ' to source in your changes.

-bF

Thanks alot fellas.. thought it might be somthing like that... does it only include text files though? ive tried it with a shell script and it didnt like that..

CHeeRS!

Lucas

In a sense , you can only source shell scripts, and keep in mind a shell script can contain commands or just hold enviroment variables and functions. They need to be in the sytax of the current running shell. And keep in mind it will execute any commands in the script.

-bF