Thanks for the responses SirDice, and Vorlin

Alright, I understand now that source doesn't work with configuration files.

Ok, the reason why I said what I did what that I used . /etc/sysconfig/Susefirewall2 to read in some changes to my firewall setup without a reboot.


According to this page source can be used to read in commands from a text file. In other words, it need not be a shell script.

So if I understand this correctly, source may be used with regular text files (such as the Susefirewall2 file) but it will only allow you to read in commands from those files. It will not work with reading in to the shell a whole configuration setup.

SirDice, I may be misunderstanding you. Were you saying that source only works with shell scripts?