source inside a shell script

Question

config.sh

hi="/home/user"
date_sec=`date '+%s'`

this is my file1.

source config.sh
cd $hi
echo "$date_sec"

The source is not working in main.sh

What language are you using? Is it sh or bash or something else? — terdon, Apr 26 '17 at 11:11
Welcome to Unix & Linux! It is difficult to offer solutions when the problem statement is simply, "it doesn't work". Please [edit] your question to give a more complete description of what you expected to happen and how that differs from the actual results. See [ask] for hints on what makes a good explanation. — Toby Speight, Apr 26 '17 at 11:45

Kusalananda · Answer 1 · 2017-04-26T11:22:16.817

Some shells requires the file that you source to be available in your $PATH unless you give a path to the script:

$ ksh93 main.sh
main.sh[1]: .: config.sh: cannot open [No such file or directory]

Changing the command to

source ./config.sh

should fix this.

Also, . (dot) is more portable than source and works with e.g. dash and should also work with any other shell masquerading as sh:

. ./config.sh