Full stop
Encyclopedia
A full stop is the punctuation
mark commonly placed at the end of sentence
s. In American English
, the term used for this punctuation is period. In the 21st century, it is often also called a dot by young people. In conversation, as opposed to linguistics, the term is often used to mean "the end of the matter." (For example, "We are calling a full stop to discussions on this subject.")
who invented the system of punctuation
where the height of placement of a dot on the line determined its meaning. The high dot (.) was called a "periodos" and indicated a finished thought or sentence, the middle dot (·) was called a "kolon" and indicated part of a complete thought, while the low dot (.) was called a "komma" and also indicated part of a complete thought.
s. If the abbreviation ends a declaratory sentence there is no additional full stop immediately following the full stop that ends the abbreviation (e.g., My name is Gabriel Gama, Jr.) This is called haplography
. Though two full stops (one for the abbreviation, one for the sentence ending) might be expected, conventionally only one is written. In the case of an interrogative or exclamatory sentence ending with an abbreviation, a question or exclamation mark can still be added (e.g., Are you Gabriel Gama, Jr.?).
, abbreviations of title
s often omit a full stop, as in Mr, Dr, Prof, Rev, Gen, which in American English
would be given as Mr., Dr., Prof., Rev., Gen.
According to the Oxford A–Z of Grammar and Punctuation, "If the abbreviation includes both the first and last letter of the abbreviated word, as in 'mister' and 'doctor', a full stop is not used." This does not include Professor, Reverend, General.
In this use, the full stop is also occasionally known as a suspension mark. This originates from the old practice of marking the end of an abbreviation with the final letter superscript and a dot beneath it (though still "suspended" above where a full stop (period) would go). Another use of the suspension mark can be seen in examples such as the "c" in "Mc" (e.g., the Rand McNally
logo).
has two alternative uses with regard to numbers. It can be used either as a decimal separator
or to present large numbers in a more readable form. The former use is more prevalent in English
-speaking countries. In much of Europe, Southern Africa and Latin America (with the exception of Mexico due to the influence of the United States), a comma is used as a decimal separator
, while a full stop or a space is used for the presentation of large numbers. The following are examples where the comma is or would be used as a decimal separator:
In countries that use the comma as a decimal separator, the full stop is sometimes found as a multiplication
sign; for example, 5,2 . 2 = 10,4. This usage is impractical in cases where the full stop is used as a decimal separator, hence the use of the interpunct
: 5.2 · 2 = 10.4. This notation is also seen when multiplying units in science; for example, 50 km/h could be written as 50 km·h−1 (this can also be written as 50 km h−1).
and in Canada is "aesthetic" punctuation, or "typesetters' quotation", where full stops and commas are included inside quotation marks even if they are not part of the quoted sentence. The style used in the UK, and to a less extent in the U.S., is so-called "logical punctuation", which stays true to the punctuation used by the original source, placing commas and full stops inside or outside quotation marks depending on where they were placed in the material that is being quoted. Scientific and technical publications, including in the U.S., almost universally use it for that reason.
The aesthetic or typesetter's rule was standard in early 19th-century Britain; it was advocated, for example, in the influential book The King's English
by Fowler and Fowler.
Before the advent of mechanical type, the order of quotation marks with full stops and commas was not given much consideration. The printing press required that the easily damaged smallest pieces of type for the comma and full stop be protected behind the more robust quotation marks. Typesetters' style still adheres to this older tradition in formal writing. It is taught to American schoolchildren when they learn how to draft prose, and is strictly observed in most books, newspapers, magazines, and journals.
References: The Chicago Manual of Style
, 15th edition; Hart's Rules for Compositors and Readers at the University Press, Oxford
.
and Japanese
, a small circle is used instead of a solid dot: "。" (U+3002 "Ideographic Full Stop"). Notably, in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macao usage, the full stop is written at center height instead of on the line: compare Simplified with Traditional
In the Devanagari script, used to write Hindi
, Sanskrit
and some other Indian languages, a vertical line ("।") (U+0964 "Devanagari Danda") is used to mark the end of a sentence. In Hindi
, it is known as poorna viraam (full stop). Some Indian languages also use the full stop, such as Marathi
. In Tamil it is known as "Mutrupulli", which means End Dot.
Urdu
uses ("۔") (U+2028) symbol.
In Thai
, no symbol corresponding to the full stop is used as terminal punctuation
. A sentence is written without spaces, and a space is typically used to mark the end of a clause or sentence.
, the full stop is often used as a delimiter
(commonly called a "dot"), such as in DNS
lookups and file
names.
In programming
, it is used in many programming languages as an important part of the syntax. C
uses it as a means of accessing a member of a struct
, and this syntax was inherited by C++
as a means of accessing a member of a class
or object
. Java
and Python
also follow this convention. Pascal
uses it both as a means of accessing a member of a record set (the equivalent of struct in C), a member of an object, and after the end construct which defines the body of the program. In Erlang, Prolog
, and Smalltalk
, it marks the end of a statement ("sentence"). In a regular expression
, it represents a match of any character. In Perl
and PHP
, the full stop is the string concatenation operator. In the Haskell
standard library, the full stop is the function composition
operator.
In file systems, the full stop is commonly used to separate the extension
of a file name from the name of the file. RISC OS
uses full stops to separate levels of the hierarchical file system when writing path names—similar to / in Unix
-based systems and \ in MS-DOS
-based systems.
In Unix-like
operating systems, some applications treat files or directories that start with a full stop as hidden. This means that they are not displayed or listed to the user by default.
In Unix-like systems and Microsoft Windows
, the dot character represents the working directory
of the file system. Two dots (..) represent the parent directory
of the working directory.
Bourne shell
-derived command-line interpreters, such as sh
, ksh
, and Bash, use the dot as a synonym for the source command, which reads a file and executes its content in the running interpreter.
Punctuation
Punctuation marks are symbols that indicate the structure and organization of written language, as well as intonation and pauses to be observed when reading aloud.In written English, punctuation is vital to disambiguate the meaning of sentences...
mark commonly placed at the end of sentence
Sentence (linguistics)
In the field of linguistics, a sentence is an expression in natural language, and often defined to indicate a grammatical unit consisting of one or more words that generally bear minimal syntactic relation to the words that precede or follow it...
s. In American English
American English
American English is a set of dialects of the English language used mostly in the United States. Approximately two-thirds of the world's native speakers of English live in the United States....
, the term used for this punctuation is period. In the 21st century, it is often also called a dot by young people. In conversation, as opposed to linguistics, the term is often used to mean "the end of the matter." (For example, "We are calling a full stop to discussions on this subject.")
History
The full stop symbol derives from Aristophanes of ByzantiumAristophanes of Byzantium
Aristophanes of Byzantium was a Greek scholar, critic and grammarian, particularly renowned for his work in Homeric scholarship, but also for work on other classical authors such as Pindar and Hesiod. Born in Byzantium about 257 BC, he soon moved to Alexandria and studied under Zenodotus,...
who invented the system of punctuation
Punctuation
Punctuation marks are symbols that indicate the structure and organization of written language, as well as intonation and pauses to be observed when reading aloud.In written English, punctuation is vital to disambiguate the meaning of sentences...
where the height of placement of a dot on the line determined its meaning. The high dot (.) was called a "periodos" and indicated a finished thought or sentence, the middle dot (·) was called a "kolon" and indicated part of a complete thought, while the low dot (.) was called a "komma" and also indicated part of a complete thought.
Abbreviations
A full stop is used after some abbreviationAbbreviation
An abbreviation is a shortened form of a word or phrase. Usually, but not always, it consists of a letter or group of letters taken from the word or phrase...
s. If the abbreviation ends a declaratory sentence there is no additional full stop immediately following the full stop that ends the abbreviation (e.g., My name is Gabriel Gama, Jr.) This is called haplography
Haplography
Haplography is the act of writing once what should be written twice. For example, the English word idolatry, the worship of idols, comes from the Greek eidololatreia, but one syllable has been lost through haplography. Other examples are "endontics" for endodontics, and "voraphilia" for...
. Though two full stops (one for the abbreviation, one for the sentence ending) might be expected, conventionally only one is written. In the case of an interrogative or exclamatory sentence ending with an abbreviation, a question or exclamation mark can still be added (e.g., Are you Gabriel Gama, Jr.?).
Titles
In British EnglishBritish English
British English, or English , is the broad term used to distinguish the forms of the English language used in the United Kingdom from forms used elsewhere...
, abbreviations of title
Title
A title is a prefix or suffix added to someone's name to signify either veneration, an official position or a professional or academic qualification. In some languages, titles may even be inserted between a first and last name...
s often omit a full stop, as in Mr, Dr, Prof, Rev, Gen, which in American English
American English
American English is a set of dialects of the English language used mostly in the United States. Approximately two-thirds of the world's native speakers of English live in the United States....
would be given as Mr., Dr., Prof., Rev., Gen.
According to the Oxford A–Z of Grammar and Punctuation, "If the abbreviation includes both the first and last letter of the abbreviated word, as in 'mister' and 'doctor', a full stop is not used." This does not include Professor, Reverend, General.
In this use, the full stop is also occasionally known as a suspension mark. This originates from the old practice of marking the end of an abbreviation with the final letter superscript and a dot beneath it (though still "suspended" above where a full stop (period) would go). Another use of the suspension mark can be seen in examples such as the "c" in "Mc" (e.g., the Rand McNally
Rand McNally
Rand McNally is an American publisher of maps, atlases, textbooks, and globes for travel, reference, commercial, and educational uses. It also provides online consumer street maps and directions, as well as commercial transportation routing software and mileage data...
logo).
Acronyms and initialisms
In acronyms and initialisms, full stops are somewhat more often placed after each initial in American English (e.g., U.S. and U.S.S.R.) than in British English (e.g., US and USSR).Mathematical usage
The full stop glyphGlyph
A glyph is an element of writing: an individual mark on a written medium that contributes to the meaning of what is written. A glyph is made up of one or more graphemes....
has two alternative uses with regard to numbers. It can be used either as a decimal separator
Decimal separator
Different symbols have been and are used for the decimal mark. The choice of symbol for the decimal mark affects the choice of symbol for the thousands separator used in digit grouping. Consequently the latter is treated in this article as well....
or to present large numbers in a more readable form. The former use is more prevalent in English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
-speaking countries. In much of Europe, Southern Africa and Latin America (with the exception of Mexico due to the influence of the United States), a comma is used as a decimal separator
Decimal separator
Different symbols have been and are used for the decimal mark. The choice of symbol for the decimal mark affects the choice of symbol for the thousands separator used in digit grouping. Consequently the latter is treated in this article as well....
, while a full stop or a space is used for the presentation of large numbers. The following are examples where the comma is or would be used as a decimal separator:
- 1.002,003 or 1 002,003 (One thousand and two and three thousandths)
- 1.002.003 or 1 002 003 (One million two thousand and three)
In countries that use the comma as a decimal separator, the full stop is sometimes found as a multiplication
Multiplication
Multiplication is the mathematical operation of scaling one number by another. It is one of the four basic operations in elementary arithmetic ....
sign; for example, 5,2 . 2 = 10,4. This usage is impractical in cases where the full stop is used as a decimal separator, hence the use of the interpunct
Interpunct
An interpunct —also called an interpoint—is a small dot used for interword separation in ancient Latin script, which also appears in some modern languages as a stand-alone sign inside a word. It is present in Unicode as code point ....
: 5.2 · 2 = 10.4. This notation is also seen when multiplying units in science; for example, 50 km/h could be written as 50 km·h−1 (this can also be written as 50 km h−1).
Punctuation styles when quoting
The traditional convention in American EnglishAmerican English
American English is a set of dialects of the English language used mostly in the United States. Approximately two-thirds of the world's native speakers of English live in the United States....
and in Canada is "aesthetic" punctuation, or "typesetters' quotation", where full stops and commas are included inside quotation marks even if they are not part of the quoted sentence. The style used in the UK, and to a less extent in the U.S., is so-called "logical punctuation", which stays true to the punctuation used by the original source, placing commas and full stops inside or outside quotation marks depending on where they were placed in the material that is being quoted. Scientific and technical publications, including in the U.S., almost universally use it for that reason.
The aesthetic or typesetter's rule was standard in early 19th-century Britain; it was advocated, for example, in the influential book The King's English
The King's English
The King's English is a book on English usage and grammar. It was written by the Fowler brothers, Henry Watson Fowler and Francis George Fowler, and published in 1906, and thus pre-dates by 20 years Modern English Usage, which was written by Henry alone after Francis's death in 1918.The King's...
by Fowler and Fowler.
- "Carefree" means "free from care or anxiety." (aesthetic or typesetters' style)
- "Carefree" means "free from care or anxiety". (logical style used here because the full stop was not part of the original quotation)
Before the advent of mechanical type, the order of quotation marks with full stops and commas was not given much consideration. The printing press required that the easily damaged smallest pieces of type for the comma and full stop be protected behind the more robust quotation marks. Typesetters' style still adheres to this older tradition in formal writing. It is taught to American schoolchildren when they learn how to draft prose, and is strictly observed in most books, newspapers, magazines, and journals.
References: The Chicago Manual of Style
The Chicago Manual of Style
The Chicago Manual of Style is a style guide for American English published since 1906 by the University of Chicago Press. Its 16 editions have prescribed writing and citation styles widely used in publishing...
, 15th edition; Hart's Rules for Compositors and Readers at the University Press, Oxford
Hart's Rules
Hart's Rules for Compositors and Readers at the University Press, Oxford was an authoritative reference book and style guide published in England by Oxford University Press...
.
Spacing after a full stop
There have been a number of conventions relating to the spacing after a full stop. Some examples are listed below:- One word space (French Spacing). This is the current convention in countries that use the modern Latin alphabet for published and final written work, as well as digital media.
- Two word spaces (English Spacing). The two-space convention stems from the use of the monospaced font on typewriters—the intent was to provide a clear break between sentences. This spacing method has been replaced by the single space convention in published print and digital media today.
- One widened space (such as an em space). This spacing was seen in historicalHistory of sentence spacingThe history of sentence spacing is the evolution of sentence spacing conventions from the introduction of movable type in Europe by Johannes Gutenberg to the present day....
typesetting practices (until the early twentieth century). It has also been used in other mechanical typesetting systems such as the Linotype machineLinotype machineThe Linotype typesetting machine is a "line casting" machine used in printing. The name of the machine comes from the fact that it produces an entire line of metal type at once, hence a line-o'-type, a significant improvement over manual typesetting....
and the TeXTeXTeX is a typesetting system designed and mostly written by Donald Knuth and released in 1978. Within the typesetting system, its name is formatted as ....
system. Modern computer-based digital fonts can adjust the spacing after terminal punctuation as well, creating space slightly wider than a standard word space.
Asian full stop
In some Asian languages, notably ChineseChinese language
The Chinese language is a language or language family consisting of varieties which are mutually intelligible to varying degrees. Originally the indigenous languages spoken by the Han Chinese in China, it forms one of the branches of Sino-Tibetan family of languages...
and Japanese
Japanese language
is a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is a member of the Japonic language family, which has a number of proposed relationships with other languages, none of which has gained wide acceptance among historical linguists .Japanese is an...
, a small circle is used instead of a solid dot: "。" (U+3002 "Ideographic Full Stop"). Notably, in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macao usage, the full stop is written at center height instead of on the line: compare Simplified with Traditional
In the Devanagari script, used to write Hindi
Hindi
Standard Hindi, or more precisely Modern Standard Hindi, also known as Manak Hindi , High Hindi, Nagari Hindi, and Literary Hindi, is a standardized and sanskritized register of the Hindustani language derived from the Khariboli dialect of Delhi...
, Sanskrit
Sanskrit
Sanskrit , is a historical Indo-Aryan language and the primary liturgical language of Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism.Buddhism: besides Pali, see Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit Today, it is listed as one of the 22 scheduled languages of India and is an official language of the state of Uttarakhand...
and some other Indian languages, a vertical line ("।") (U+0964 "Devanagari Danda") is used to mark the end of a sentence. In Hindi
Hindi
Standard Hindi, or more precisely Modern Standard Hindi, also known as Manak Hindi , High Hindi, Nagari Hindi, and Literary Hindi, is a standardized and sanskritized register of the Hindustani language derived from the Khariboli dialect of Delhi...
, it is known as poorna viraam (full stop). Some Indian languages also use the full stop, such as Marathi
Marathi language
Marathi is an Indo-Aryan language spoken by the Marathi people of western and central India. It is the official language of the state of Maharashtra. There are over 68 million fluent speakers worldwide. Marathi has the fourth largest number of native speakers in India and is the fifteenth most...
. In Tamil it is known as "Mutrupulli", which means End Dot.
Urdu
Urdu
Urdu is a register of the Hindustani language that is identified with Muslims in South Asia. It belongs to the Indo-European family. Urdu is the national language and lingua franca of Pakistan. It is also widely spoken in some regions of India, where it is one of the 22 scheduled languages and an...
uses ("۔") (U+2028) symbol.
In Thai
Thai language
Thai , also known as Central Thai and Siamese, is the national and official language of Thailand and the native language of the Thai people, Thailand's dominant ethnic group. Thai is a member of the Tai group of the Tai–Kadai language family. Historical linguists have been unable to definitively...
, no symbol corresponding to the full stop is used as terminal punctuation
Terminal punctuation
Terminal punctuation are punctuation marks used to identify the end of a portion of text. Terminal punctuation marks are also referred to as end marks and stops....
. A sentence is written without spaces, and a space is typically used to mark the end of a clause or sentence.
Use in telegrams
The term STOP was used in telegrams in place of the full stop. The end of a sentence would be marked by STOP, because punctuation cost extra.Computing use
In computingComputing
Computing is usually defined as the activity of using and improving computer hardware and software. It is the computer-specific part of information technology...
, the full stop is often used as a delimiter
Delimiter
A delimiter is a sequence of one or more characters used to specify the boundary between separate, independent regions in plain text or other data streams. An example of a delimiter is the comma character, which acts as a field delimiter in a sequence of comma-separated values.Delimiters represent...
(commonly called a "dot"), such as in DNS
Domain name system
The Domain Name System is a hierarchical distributed naming system for computers, services, or any resource connected to the Internet or a private network. It associates various information with domain names assigned to each of the participating entities...
lookups and file
Computer file
A computer file is a block of arbitrary information, or resource for storing information, which is available to a computer program and is usually based on some kind of durable storage. A file is durable in the sense that it remains available for programs to use after the current program has finished...
names.
- www.wikipedia.org
- document.txt
- 192.168.0.1
In programming
Computer programming
Computer programming is the process of designing, writing, testing, debugging, and maintaining the source code of computer programs. This source code is written in one or more programming languages. The purpose of programming is to create a program that performs specific operations or exhibits a...
, it is used in many programming languages as an important part of the syntax. C
C (programming language)
C is a general-purpose computer programming language developed between 1969 and 1973 by Dennis Ritchie at the Bell Telephone Laboratories for use with the Unix operating system....
uses it as a means of accessing a member of a struct
Struct
struct is a computer science term for a record that is used to store more than one value.struct is used in the following programming languages:* struct * struct vs. C++ classes...
, and this syntax was inherited by C++
C++
C++ is a statically typed, free-form, multi-paradigm, compiled, general-purpose programming language. It is regarded as an intermediate-level language, as it comprises a combination of both high-level and low-level language features. It was developed by Bjarne Stroustrup starting in 1979 at Bell...
as a means of accessing a member of a class
Class (computer science)
In object-oriented programming, a class is a construct that is used as a blueprint to create instances of itself – referred to as class instances, class objects, instance objects or simply objects. A class defines constituent members which enable these class instances to have state and behavior...
or object
Object (computer science)
In computer science, an object is any entity that can be manipulated by the commands of a programming language, such as a value, variable, function, or data structure...
. Java
Java (programming language)
Java is a programming language originally developed by James Gosling at Sun Microsystems and released in 1995 as a core component of Sun Microsystems' Java platform. The language derives much of its syntax from C and C++ but has a simpler object model and fewer low-level facilities...
and Python
Python (programming language)
Python is a general-purpose, high-level programming language whose design philosophy emphasizes code readability. Python claims to "[combine] remarkable power with very clear syntax", and its standard library is large and comprehensive...
also follow this convention. Pascal
Pascal (programming language)
Pascal is an influential imperative and procedural programming language, designed in 1968/9 and published in 1970 by Niklaus Wirth as a small and efficient language intended to encourage good programming practices using structured programming and data structuring.A derivative known as Object Pascal...
uses it both as a means of accessing a member of a record set (the equivalent of struct in C), a member of an object, and after the end construct which defines the body of the program. In Erlang, Prolog
Prolog
Prolog is a general purpose logic programming language associated with artificial intelligence and computational linguistics.Prolog has its roots in first-order logic, a formal logic, and unlike many other programming languages, Prolog is declarative: the program logic is expressed in terms of...
, and Smalltalk
Smalltalk
Smalltalk is an object-oriented, dynamically typed, reflective programming language. Smalltalk was created as the language to underpin the "new world" of computing exemplified by "human–computer symbiosis." It was designed and created in part for educational use, more so for constructionist...
, it marks the end of a statement ("sentence"). In a regular expression
Regular expression
In computing, a regular expression provides a concise and flexible means for "matching" strings of text, such as particular characters, words, or patterns of characters. Abbreviations for "regular expression" include "regex" and "regexp"...
, it represents a match of any character. In Perl
Perl
Perl is a high-level, general-purpose, interpreted, dynamic programming language. Perl was originally developed by Larry Wall in 1987 as a general-purpose Unix scripting language to make report processing easier. Since then, it has undergone many changes and revisions and become widely popular...
and PHP
PHP
PHP is a general-purpose server-side scripting language originally designed for web development to produce dynamic web pages. For this purpose, PHP code is embedded into the HTML source document and interpreted by a web server with a PHP processor module, which generates the web page document...
, the full stop is the string concatenation operator. In the Haskell
Haskell (programming language)
Haskell is a standardized, general-purpose purely functional programming language, with non-strict semantics and strong static typing. It is named after logician Haskell Curry. In Haskell, "a function is a first-class citizen" of the programming language. As a functional programming language, the...
standard library, the full stop is the function composition
Function composition
In mathematics, function composition is the application of one function to the results of another. For instance, the functions and can be composed by computing the output of g when it has an argument of f instead of x...
operator.
In file systems, the full stop is commonly used to separate the extension
Filename extension
A filename extension is a suffix to the name of a computer file applied to indicate the encoding of its contents or usage....
of a file name from the name of the file. RISC OS
RISC OS
RISC OS is a computer operating system originally developed by Acorn Computers Ltd in Cambridge, England for their range of desktop computers, based on their own ARM architecture. First released in 1987, under the name Arthur, the subsequent iteration was renamed as in 1988...
uses full stops to separate levels of the hierarchical file system when writing path names—similar to / in Unix
Unix
Unix is a multitasking, multi-user computer operating system originally developed in 1969 by a group of AT&T employees at Bell Labs, including Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, Brian Kernighan, Douglas McIlroy, and Joe Ossanna...
-based systems and \ in MS-DOS
MS-DOS
MS-DOS is an operating system for x86-based personal computers. It was the most commonly used member of the DOS family of operating systems, and was the main operating system for IBM PC compatible personal computers during the 1980s to the mid 1990s, until it was gradually superseded by operating...
-based systems.
In Unix-like
Unix-like
A Unix-like operating system is one that behaves in a manner similar to a Unix system, while not necessarily conforming to or being certified to any version of the Single UNIX Specification....
operating systems, some applications treat files or directories that start with a full stop as hidden. This means that they are not displayed or listed to the user by default.
In Unix-like systems and Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...
, the dot character represents the working directory
Working directory
In computing, the working directory of a process is a directory of a hierarchical file system, if any, dynamically associated with each process. When the process refers to a file using a simple file name or relative path , the reference is interpreted relative to the current working directory of...
of the file system. Two dots (..) represent the parent directory
Parent directory
In computing, the parent directory of a given directory A is the directory B in which A is located. In As absolute path, B is the predecessor of A....
of the working directory.
Bourne shell
Bourne shell
The Bourne shell, or sh, was the default Unix shell of Unix Version 7 and most Unix-like systems continue to have /bin/sh - which will be the Bourne shell, or a symbolic link or hard link to a compatible shell - even when more modern shells are used by most users.Developed by Stephen Bourne at AT&T...
-derived command-line interpreters, such as sh
Bourne shell
The Bourne shell, or sh, was the default Unix shell of Unix Version 7 and most Unix-like systems continue to have /bin/sh - which will be the Bourne shell, or a symbolic link or hard link to a compatible shell - even when more modern shells are used by most users.Developed by Stephen Bourne at AT&T...
, ksh
Korn shell
The Korn shell is a Unix shell which was developed by David Korn in the early 1980s and announced at USENIX on July 14, 1983. Other early contributors were AT&T Bell Labs developers Mike Veach, who wrote the emacs code, and Pat Sullivan, who wrote the vi code...
, and Bash, use the dot as a synonym for the source command, which reads a file and executes its content in the running interpreter.
External links
- Chicago Style Q&A on one space versus two after sentences