A
configuration file for a
computer program. The name comes from the fact that the
filenames usually began with a dot (.), to hide them on
Unix systems. Typically, a
program's
dotfile is read when the
program starts up and sets various
variables and
parameters. If you're using
Unix or
Linux and don't know what a
dotfile is, try this
command in your
home directory:
ls -la
...and you'll probably see a few. Common examples:
dotfiles.org has a large collection of examples. Some
dotfiles can go on for hundreds of lines, particularly
.emacs files.