On Sun, Dec 4, 2011 at 11:01 PM, James Mcphee <jmcphe@gmail.com> wrote:

If you do the dot and then space, and then the file name (with path unless it's in $PATH), then it will execute in the current shell. That means you can set your prompt or whatnot and it will affect your current shell.

. /path/to/script

I use this to do things like set my prompt and whatnot. It's basically shorthand for calling "source".

The technical details are that it does not fork a new process and run the program in the new shell, but will run it in the current process space. Instead of a fork and exec, it just issues an exec.

The "." in ./script is shorthand for your current directory. That's why when you do an "ls -al" you see "." and "..". The ".." is parent directory, so it's a way of saying "back up a directory". If you're in /home/name/blah/yadda, and you want to execute /home/name/lala, then issue "../../lala/script"

Anyway, just giving you more info to confuse you :)

On Sun, Dec 4, 2011 at 10:39 PM, Michael Havens <bmike1@gmail.com> wrote:

I put the right terms into google finally and found out to put a full path name without the leading dot. I always thought that the dot meant that you were telling the computer you were running a program (you know- ./). Silly me.
--
:-)~MIKE~(-:

---------------------------------------------------
PLUG-discuss mailing list - PLUG-discuss@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us
To subscribe, unsubscribe, or to change your mail settings:
http://lists.PLUG.phoenix.az.us/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss

--
James McPhee
jmcphe@gmail.com

---------------------------------------------------
PLUG-discuss mailing list - PLUG-discuss@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us
To subscribe, unsubscribe, or to change your mail settings:
http://lists.PLUG.phoenix.az.us/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss