Set environment variables in Bourne shell (sh)
Posted by Quinn McHenry in Bourne shell
An environment variable must be set and exported with separate commands in the Bourne shell. To set the EDITOR variable to vi, use:
EDITOR=vi
export EDITOR
These commands can be placed in ~/.profile to be executed automatically at login, placed in a shell script, or executed manually. Exporting a variable makes it available to other shells spawned from the current shell as when running another command or shell script.
To add to an existing variable, such as path, use this format:
PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/bin
export PATH EDITOR
Multiple variables can be exported with one export command.
About Quinn McHenry
Quinn was one of the original co-founders of Tech-Recipes. He is currently crafting iOS applications as a senior developer at Small Planet Digital in Brooklyn, New York.
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The Conversation
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March 29, 2010 at 10:39 am, Name said:
Not right exactly.
SH = Bourne Shell
Bash = Bourne Again Shell
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bourne_shell
May 03, 2010 at 5:25 am, Anonymous said:
Can we do export and set in one command in bash ?
December 13, 2010 at 7:22 pm, Duncan Anderson said:
As far as I know, the commands must be on separate lines in the Bourne shell. I n the Korn shell it is possible to use one line thus:
EDITOR=vi export EDITOR
If I am not mistaken this also works in Bash.