bash - What does 'source' do?

$ whatis source
source: nothing appropriate.
$ man source
No manual entry for source
$ source
bash: source: filename argument required
source: usage: source filename [arguments]

It exists, and it is runnable. Why isn't there any documentation about it in Ubuntu? What does it do? How can I install documentation about it?

Answer

source is a bash shell built-in command that executes the content of the file passed as argument, in the current shell. It has a synonym in . (period).

Syntax

. filename [arguments]

source filename [arguments]