Question

297

BASH script to set environment variables not working

rated 0 times [ 297] [ 0] / answers: 1 / hits: 398005 / 2 Years ago, thu, november 25, 2021, 8:37:48

I have written the following script to set some environment variables when needed:

#!/bin/sh

export BASE=/home/develop/trees

echo $BASE

export PATH=$PATH:$BASE

echo $PATH

Below the command and the results I can see on my terminal: the script runs, but the variables are not set at the end.

~$: ./script.sh

/home/develop/trees

/bin:......:/home/develop/trees

~$: echo $BASE



~$:

What is wrong?

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2 Years ago

answered 2 Years ago intssive · Accepted Answer

export exports the variable assignment to child processes of the shell in which the export command was ran. Your command-line environment is the parent of the script's shell, so it does not see the variable assignment.

You can use the . (or source) bash command to execute the script commands in the current shell environment and achieve what you want, e.g.

source ./script.sh

echo "$BASE"

Will produce

/home/develop/trees

The source command, often seen in scripts, is a bash synonym for ., which is part of the POSIX standard (so . is available in dash, for example, but source isn't).

. ./script.sh     # identical to "source ./script.sh"

(. script.sh and source script.sh will first look for script.sh in PATH, so it's safer to specify the path to script.sh.)