Environment variables — Basics of Bash

• Important notes
  • Permissions and execution
  • Program in the working directory
• Lesson notes

Important notes

Note that the correct way of creating new variables is without any spaces: VAR=42, not VAR = 42 or VAR =42 or VAR= 42.

Permissions and execution

If you try to create your own bash-script file and run it, Bash will complain about permissions. The reason is, your new text file is not set to be an executable program. Learn more about permissions from Wikibooks or just google "unix permissions".

To quickly fix your issue, do chmod +x your_bash_script_file. This will add executable to your file's permissions, and you'll be able to run it.

Program in the working directory

./program just means "run program that is located in the working directory". . stands for the working directory, and / is just a part of the path, same as in /home/something.

If your program's location is in PATH variable already, then you don't need to add ./ even if you're in the same directory with the program, because Bash already knows where to look for your program.

Lesson notes

• env to view environment variables
• VAR=value to set a new environment variable named VAR with value value (e.g. BUILDING_NAME=Tory)
• echo $VAR to print out the value of VAR
• VAR=value ./myscript to run myscript bash script file so that it knows the VAR variable
• export VAR=value to export a variable to all sessions (it will appear in the env list)
• PATH=/home/joe/apps:$PATH to add /home/joe/apps to the PATH variable. Bash will look inside /home/joe/apps when searching for commands and programss from now on.