Section 5.7.3 for creating .initrc and .xsession file for xfce written as given below. My question is what is the need of dot after inverted commas (i.e. ". /usr )? What will happen if it is done this way? % echo ". /usr/local/etc/xdg/xfce4/xinitrc" > ~/.xinitrc % echo ". /usr/local/etc/xdg/xfce4/xinitrc" > ~/.xsession