How do I find the documentation for shell builtins for z/OS?

Question

I am trying to figure out how the dot command behaves under /bin/sh, i.e.

. sourcedfile

but I am having trouble finding it. I can find other builtins like cd with man, e.g.

man cd

but I am not sure what to enter for the dot command (man . doesn't work). The online docs to the UNIX System Services Command Reference didn't seem to have anything either.

Answer 1

csh and tcsh don't have a . command; it only has source command, which does the same.

The standard tcsh manpage describes the builtins in the tcsh manpage, but it seems that on zOS this is split to different pages; there's a list here.

You should never use the POSIX sh documentation for csh; while it's superficially similar there are also many differences, and it's just a different shell.

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It's also generally discouraged to use tcsh, as it has a number of limitations such as lack of functions, limited redirection, limited parser, and a few others that tend to cause a world of pain for non-trivial scripts.