A couple of years ago I've configured a mail server with exim4 + dovecot 2.2.10 on debian and recently have been tweaking dovecot config. I use a self-signed x509 openSSL certificate, the paths to the certificate and the key are given as
ssl_cert = </etc/ssl/certs/dovecot.pem"
Notice the < in front of the full path.
I tried removing it to see the effect, and here's what I got in dovecot.log:
dovecot: imap-login: Fatal: Couldn't parse private ssl_key: error:0906D06C:PEM routines:PEM_read_bio:no start line: Expecting: ANY PRIVATE KEY
Putting the < back got rid of it, but I can't find the meaning behind this sign. Some manuals give these paths without the <, though the official dovecot documentation uses it.