I like to use external configuration for most of my dot files in my home directory. Simple example, here is my .bash_aliases file:
. /path/to/external/alias-config.conf
where the external file contains my aliases. Same idea with my .vimrc:
. /path/to/external/vim-config.conf
But when I open vim I get this error:
Error detected while processing /home/demo/.vimrc:
line 1:
E492: Not an editor command: . '/path/to/external/vim-config.conf'
But when I change my .vimrc to be:
source /path/to/external/vim-config.conf
it is able to successfully source my external configuration.
It was my understanding that 'source' is an alias of '.', so what is going on here? I try to write the dot files in my home directory to be POSIX compliant, so this sort of thing undermines my intention. Any insight into this peculiarity would be appreciated.
My default shell is Bash and my OS is Ubuntu Server 16.04, if that makes any difference.