What is the purpose of period (.) in the ~/.bashrc : <p>I've been studying the bash scripting then i noticed using the period wildcard in the bash script, in my sense the period treated as current directory, </p>

<p>I have snippet </p>

<pre><code>if ! shopt -oq posix; then
  if [ -f /usr/share/bash-completion/bash_completion ]; then
    . /usr/share/bash-completion/bash_completion
  elif [ -f /etc/bash_completion ]; then
    . /etc/bash_completion
  fi
fi
</code></pre>

<p><strong>. /etc/bash_completion</strong> In this script what is the use of the (.), period. </p>
