This question already has answers here:
What's a concise way to check that environment variables are set in a Unix shell script?
(14 answers)
Closed 9 years ago.
I am writing a shell script, where I have to check if environment variable is set, if not set then I have to set it. Is there any way to check in shell script, whether an environment variable is already set or not ?
The standard solution to conditionally assign a variable (whether in the environment or not) is:
: ${VAR=foo}
That will set VAR to the value "foo" only if it is unset.
To set VAR to "foo" if VAR is unset or the empty string, use:
: ${VAR:=foo}
To put VAR in the environment, follow up with:
export VAR
You can also do export VAR=${VAR-foo} or export VAR=${VAR:=foo}, but some older shells do not support the syntax of assignment and export in the same line. Also, DRY; using the name on both sides of the = operator is unnecessary repetition. (A second line exporting the variable violates the same principal, but feels better.)
Note that it is very difficult in general to determine if a variable is in the environment. Parsing the output of env will not work. Consider:
export foo='
VAR=var-value'
env | grep VAR
Nor does it work to spawn a subshell and test:
sh -c 'echo $VAR'
That would indicate the VAR is set in the subshell, which would be an indicator that VAR is in the environment of the current process, but it may simply be that VAR is set in the initialization of the subshell. Functionally, however, the result is the same as if VAR is in the environment. Fortunately, you do not usually care if VAR is in the environment or not. If you need it there, put it there. If you need it out, take it out.
[ -z "$VARIABLE" ] && VARIABLE="abc"
if env | grep -q ^VARIABLE=
then
echo env variable is already exported
else
echo env variable was not exported, but now it is
export VARIABLE
fi
I want to stress that [ -z $VARIABLE ] is not enough, because you can have VARIABLE but it was not exported. That means that it is not an environment variable at all.
What you want to do is native in bash, it is called parameter substitution:
VARIABLE="${VARIABLE:=abc}"
If VARIABLE is not set, right hand side will be equal to abc. Note that the internal operator := may be replaced with :- which tests if VARIABLE is not set or empty.
if [ -z "$VARIABLE" ]; then
VARIABLE=...
fi
This checks if the length of $VARIABLE is zero.
Related
I want to unset all environment variables through C-shell script.
With unsetenv * command I can do that with command line.
How can we make it work in our script?
I am hitting undefined identifier issue when I run through script.
From tcsh(1):
unsetenv pattern
Removes all environment variables whose names match pattern.
`unsetenv *' thus removes all environment variables; this is a
bad idea. It is not an error for nothing to be unsetenved.
So using unsetenv * should work. It is possible you have a (possible old) (t)csh version that doesn't support this feature?
Either way, as the manual page says unsetting everything is probably a bad idea. You will want to keep various variables such as HOME, USER, and some others. A better way might be something like:
foreach e (`env`)
set name = `echo "$e" | cut -d "=" -f 1`
# Note: this list should be longer.
if ( "$name" != "HOME" ) then
unsetenv "$name"
endif
end
I'm writing a bash script, and it needs to check if an environment variable exists, and set it to the parent directory of where the script is being run if the variable isn't already set. If it is already set, it should do nothing. What's the best way of doing this?
There are two parts. First, the parent of the current working directory is just $PWD/... Second, you can assign a value to a variable if it isn't already set with
: ${MYVAR:=$PWD/..}
The first : is the do-nothing command, but its arguments are still evaluated. The parameter expansion operator := has the side effect of setting MYVAR to the given value if it isn't already set.
Three things:
An environment variable is a globally available, in a program and it child programs. A shell variable is only available in the current shell. You asked to know whether the environment variable exists. Are you sure that is what you want? In that case you may want to do a
if set | grep ^variable_name= > /dev/null ; then
#set the variable
fi
Note that this just checks if the variable exists. If you do it very early in your script, you are almost sure that the variable is indeed an environment variable. But do you really care if it is a variable specific to your local shell or an environment variable?
Second is, do you care if the variable exists? Or do you just want it to contain the value of the parent directory? Do you need the set | grep in the example above, or is it sufficient to test that [ "$variable" != "" ] ? , as in
if [ "$variable" = "" ] ; then
# set the value to the parent-dir
fi
Third, the parent-dir is generally dirname $PWD. $PWD/.. is also the parent-dir.
So, if you do not care whether it is is an environment variable or not, and if you just want it to contain an actual directory, the code would be something like:
if [ "$variable" = "" ] ; then
variable=$(dirname "$PWD")
fi
(which is perhaps a bit more readable Chepner's answer)
Here's my current process:
var[product]=messaging_app
var[component]=sms
var[version]=1.0.7
var[yum_location]=$product/$component/$deliverable_name
var[deliverable_name]=$product-$component-$version
# iterate on associative array indices
for default_var in "${!var[#]}" ; do
# skip variables that have been previously declared
if [[ -z ${!default_var} ]] ; then
# export each index as a variable, setting value to the value for that index in the array
export "$default_var=${var[$default_var]}"
fi
done
The core functionality I'm looking for is to set a list of default variables that will not overwrite previously declared variables.
The above code does that, but it also created the issue of these variables can now not depend on one another. This is because the ordering of the associative array's indices output from "${!var[#]}" is not always the same as the order they were declared in.
Does a simpler solution exist like:
declare --nooverwrite this=that
I haven't been able to find anything akin to that.
Also, I'm aware that this can be done with an if statement. However using a bunch of if statements would kill the readability on a script with near 100 default variables.
From 3.5.3 Shell Parameter Expansion:
${parameter:=word}
If parameter is unset or null, the expansion of word is assigned to parameter. The value of parameter is then substituted. Positional parameters and special parameters may not be assigned to in this way.
So
: ${this:=that}
: needed because otherwise the shell would see ${this:=that} as a request to run, as a command, whatever that expanded to.
$ echo "$this"
$ : ${this:=that}
$ echo "$this"
that
$ this=foo
$ echo "$this"
foo
$ : ${this:=that}
$ echo "$this"
foo
You can also to this the first place you use the variable (instead of on its own) if that suits things better (but make sure that's clear because it is easy to mess that up in later edits).
$ echo "$this"
$ echo "${this:=that}"
that
$ echo "$this"
that
Doing this dynamically, however, is less easy and may require eval.
I need to set an environment variable called "64bit" (i.e. with a leading digit) in bash. However, bash variable names disallow a variable with a leading digit. I know a way to set it when invoking bash:
env 64bit=1 /usr/bin/bash
However, I'm looking for a way to change it in the currently running shell i.e. not by starting a new shell. I also know that csh allows variables to start with a digit, but I need to use bash.
Is there any way to achieve this?
You can also bypass the bash interpreter and define the variable directly with the bash internal functions:
$ gdb --batch-silent -ex "attach $$" \
-ex 'set bind_variable("64bit", "1", 0)' \
-ex 'set *(int*)(find_variable("64bit")+sizeof(char*)*5) = 1' \
-ex 'set array_needs_making = 1'
$ env | grep 64
64bit=1
As people point out, Bash does not allow variables starting with digits. It does however pass on unrecognized environment string to external programs, which is why the variable shows up in env but not in set.
As a workaround, you can work with a valid name like _64bit and then automatically inject your invalid variable name into commands you run:
#!/bin/bash
# Setup for injection hack
original=$PATH
PATH="/"
command_not_found_handle() {
PATH="$original" env "64bit=$_64bit" "$#"
}
# Your script and logic
_64bit="some dynamic value"
# This verifies that '64bit' is automatically set
env | grep ^64bit
Note that this particular method only works if you invoke through $PATH, not if you use relative or absolute path names.
If you do invoke by pathname, consider modifying PATH and invoking by name instead.
I am writing a shell script to set the environment variables whose values are available in a file. Below is the shell script I wrote,
VARIABLE_FILE=env-var.dat
if [ -f ${VARIABLE_FILE} ] ; then
. ${VARIABLE_FILE}
if [ ! -z "${TEST_VAR1}" ] ; then
export TEST_VAR1="${TEST_VAR1}"
fi
if [ ! -z "${TEST_VAR2}" ] ; then
export TEST_VAR2="${TEST_VAR2}"
fi
fi
The above code works only in bash shell, since I have used export command to set the environment variable and it fails if I used it with any other shell. Is there is any command to set the environment variable which works in any shell ?
"Fancier" shells like bash and zsh permit you to set a variable and export it as an environment variable at the same time like so:
export FOO=bar
With a standard POSIX bourne shell, the equivalent is achieved by doing it in two commands:
FOO=bar
export FOO
Note that once you've exported a variable, you can reset it to a different value later in the script and it's still exported (you don't need to export it again). Also, you can export several variables at a time:
FOO=bar
BAZ=quux
export FOO BAZ
You mentioned tcsh in your comment, but csh and derivatives are completely different from bourne-based shells (and not recommended for use!). You can rarely make a shell script compatible with both sh and csh at the same time. For csh, look into setenv
If you really want this to happen, it can be done, but it's tricky. One way to do it is to use awk to output the correct syntax and evaluate the text coming back from awk. To share a single environment variable value file between major sh and csh flavors, the following command in a file will import a variable value file to the environment: (yes, yes, it's one huge line, due to the inflexible way that some shells treat the backticks. If you didn't mind having a .awk file too, you could use awk -f...)
eval `awk '{ var = $1; $1=""; val=substr($0,2); if ( ENVIRON["SHELL"] ~ /csh$/) { print "setenv", var, " \"" val "\";" } else { print var "=\"" val "\"" ; print "export", var }}' $HOME/env_value_file`
The variable value file is in this format:
FOO value for foo
BAR foo bar
BAZ $BAR plus values $FOO
Design notes for educational purposes:
In awk, there's no easy way of accessing fields 2-NF, so if there
could be spaces in our variable values we need to modify $1 to get
$0 to be close to get the value we want.
To get this to work, since a SHELL variable is always set, but not as an
environment variable and not with a consistent capitalization, you have to wet
a SHELL environment variable from the shell's value as below.
as an environment variable before you use the script.
Also, if you want the new environment values to be present after the import
environment script you need to source the environment script.
If a shell doesn't do eval well, you'll have to tweak the script.
For bourne shell flavors (bash, sh, ksh, zsh):
export SHELL
. import_environment
For csh flavors: (shell variable tends to be lower case in csh shells)
setenv SHELL "$shell"
source import_environment