I hate that it's hidden too. There's no reason for it to be hidden and arguably some reason for it not to be hidden.

I did discover one reason for it not to be just "env" though, which surprised me, which is that "source env" will yield "bash: source: /usr/bin/env: cannot execute binary file". I did not expect the source command to use the $PATH to resolve the filename. Probably some minor security issues that can result from that out there in the world. Arguably anyone loading it should use "source ./.env" or equivalent, with full path.

It's documented in the bash manual, of course. But it is rather complicated as to when it will and will not use $PATH.