What does this notation mean in bash?

Question

I am pretty sure this will be a duplicate, because I have seen it sometimes at other places, but I do not remember where and I also (obviously) do not know how it is called.

In an other SO post, there is this piece of code (bash):

obj(){
    . <(sed "s/obj/$1/g" obj.class)
}

What does . < do ? If it has a name, what is it ?

Answer 1

Source . ^[Docs]

Read and execute commands from the filename argument in the current shell context.

source is a synonym for dot/period . in bash, but not in POSIX sh, so for maximum compatibility use the period.

• What's the meaning of a dot before a command in shell?

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Process Substitution < () ^[Docs]

Process substitution allows a process’s input or output to be referred to using a filename.

• What does "< <(command args)" mean in the shell?