To set an environment variable in Linux, you can use the export
command. Here’s how you can do it:
To set a temporary environment variable for the current session:
run the following command in the terminal:
export VARIABLE_NAME=value
Replace VARIABLE_NAME
with the name of the variable you want to set, and value
with the desired value. For example, to set a variable named MY_VAR
with the value hello
, you would run:
export MY_VAR=hello
To make the environment variable persistent across sessions:
you can add the export command to your shell’s configuration file. The configuration file varies depending on the shell you are using:
For Bash, modify the ~/.bashrc
file:
echo 'export VARIABLE_NAME=value' >> ~/.bashrc
For Zsh, modify the ~/.zshrc
file:
echo 'export VARIABLE_NAME=value' >> ~/.zshrc
For Fish, modify the ~/.config/fish/config.fish
file:
echo 'set -x VARIABLE_NAME value' >> ~/.config/fish/config.fish
After modifying the shell’s configuration file, you need to reload it to apply the changes. You can either open a new terminal session or run the following command to reload the configuration:
For Bash:
source ~/.bashrc
For Zsh:
source ~/.zshrc
For Fish:
source ~/.config/fish/config.fish
To verify that the environment variable is set, you can use the echo
command:bashCopy codeecho $VARIABLE_NAME
This will display the value of the environment variable on the terminal.
By setting environment variables, you can define custom values that can be accessed by programs and scripts running on your Linux system.
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