Robert A. Uhl

In Unix there is a convention that filenames beginning with a dot (.) are not normally displayed unless one asks for them to be; they are thus usually hidden. A further convention holds that programs will look for settings files within a user’s home directory (his personal folder, if you will) and that these files will be hidden (i.e. have names starting with a dot). An example might be .bashrc (containing run commands for bash) or .emacs (settings for emacs) or .firefox (settings for firefox).

These files are almost always simple text files (or folders full of simple text files), which is another nicety of Unix: if I like another user’s settings I can just grab them for myself. Some folks call all these hidden application settings files & folders ‘dotfiles,’ since the names are pronounced ‘dot-bash-r-c,’ ‘dot-e-macs,’ ‘dot-fire-fox’ and so forth.

Now there’s a website called dotfiles.org which collects lots of dotfiles from Unix users all over the world. Pretty neat reference for us geeks.

Hat-tip to Maj. D.