14

I used to think that the built-ins . and source are equivalent. This question agrees with me when it comes to bash. However I encountered the following using zsh:

desktop➜  ~/pst  . env
/usr/bin/env:1: no such file or directory:  ^@^A^@^@^@X^Z@^@^@^@^@^@@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@\M-8q^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@@^@8^@
/usr/bin/env:2: parse error near `)'
desktop➜  ~/pst  source env
desktop➜  ~/pst  file env
env: ASCII text

source did what I expected, but what's . trying to do?

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1 Answers1

17

man zshall has the answer:

   source file [ arg ... ]
          Same as `.', except that the current directory is always searched and is always searched first, before directories in $path.

Example:

desktop➜  ~/pst  source /bin/env
/bin/env:1: no such file or directory: ^@^A^@^@^@X^Z@^@^@^@^@^@@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@\M-8q^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@@^@8^@
/bin/env:2: parse error near `)'
desktop➜  ~/pst  . env
/usr/bin/env:1: no such file or directory: ^@^A^@^@^@X^Z@^@^@^@^@^@@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@\M-8q^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@@^@8^@
/usr/bin/env:2: parse error near `)'
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