Frequently Asked Question

Why are some files hidden, and what is the dot-file convention?

A file whose name starts with a dot, .bashrc, .config, .git, is hidden by convention: ls skips it unless you pass -a. The convention was an accident. When . and .. were added to every directory, the author of ls wanted a quick way to skip those two entries, and the cheapest test was "starts with a dot". The side effect of hiding any other dot-prefixed file turned out to be useful, and within a few years it had become the standard place for per-user configuration.

Today your home directory is full of dotfiles: shell startup (.bashrc, .profile), editor configuration (.vimrc), git settings (.gitconfig), SSH keys (.ssh/), application caches and state. The XDG Base Directory Specification tries to herd new applications into ~/.config/, ~/.local/share/, and ~/.cache/ rather than scattering dotfiles across $HOME, but legacy programs still litter the home directory. To act on hidden files in a script, use ls -A (which omits . and ..) or enable shopt -s dotglob so that * matches them.