 The file name starts with a dot, because most Unix-like operating systems consider any file that begins with dot to be hidden.This file is often maintained with the shell command "htpasswd" which can add, delete, and update users, and will properly encode the password for use (so that it is easily checked, but not reversed back to the original password).The file consists of rows, each row corresponding to a username, followed by a colon, followed by a string containing the hashed password optionally prepended by an algorithm specifier ("$2y$", "$apr1$" or "{SHA}") and/or salt.