Difference between virtualenv and “virtualenv .”

Question

A command line instruction on this page https://github.com/plumi/plumi.app/blob/master/docs/INSTALL.rst

is "virtualenv ."

That is, there's a period after a space.

I can't find any documentation for including a period after virtualenv in this manner.

Do you think this matters, does it make no difference if one simply writes virtualenv without the period?

Answer 1

virtualenv --help
Usage: virtualenv [OPTIONS] DEST_DIR

From a forum post :

"." (dot) has many meanings:
In a pathname it means "current directory"--eg. ./filename
As a prefix to a filename, it causes it to be hidden--eg. .filename
It is a synonym for the "source" command--used to pull an executable file into a script.--eg: . execfile (note the space)
In a regular expression it matches any single character.

As blender pointed out, the command virtualenv . will make the virtualenv in the current directory