Ubuntu command ./

Question

I was wondering What the command ./ exactly does

example:./ts3client_runscript.sh start

Thanks for help.

Answer 1

It's not a command, it's a location in the filesystem. . is the current working directory, and / is a path separator. What you are doing with that command, is specifying a file in the current working directory. You can do this without ./ except when you want to execute the file, so, as in the command

./ts3client_runscript.sh start

you are telling the shell to execute the file. You can execute a file that is not in the current working directory by specifying the path to it, for example /bin/uname as long as the file is executable, and ./ is specifying the path in the same way.

Answer 2

. means "here".
So your command tries to execute the file here/ts3client_runscript.sh, that has execution permissions (so it gets executed), which accepts a parameter start.

Try with

echo "something">foo
./foo
chmod +x ./foo
./foo

You can see what "here" is via the command pwd.