Ah those mysterious dot files (.filename) What are those?

Cybercity explains that these are nothing but a configuration files that are found in one’s home directory. True.

It is use to configure settings for unix programs. True.

And the favorite of all explanation of dot files are it is a hidden files, intended not to be displayed or listed when browsing a particular directory.

You can list dot files using ls command:

 ls -a

the switch ‘-a’ tells the shell to list all files in the current directory whether it is an ordinary files, a directory, a link or a hidden (dot) files.