What are my environment variables?

Question

I would like to find out my environment variables in bash. Are they stored somewhere?

Wow that was fast! I guess all the command do the trick. The export command gave me a lot of "declare -x" in front. Thanks guys! — Halil, Dec 13 '10 at 17:59
It was inappropriate to close this question as off topic. When programming on Linux, as I am doing at the moment, it is often useful to discover what the environmental variables are. Quite a lot of people have found this to be a useful question, including me. — Graham Asher, Sep 22 '15 at 17:32

score 91 · Accepted Answer · edited May 23 '17 at 12:18

91

I am not sure if thats what you want, but try printenv
This will show you all your environment variables.

About where they are stored
Linux: where are environment variables stored?

How to set Shell Environment Variables
http://www.codecoffee.com/tipsforlinux/articles/030.html

Happy reading :-)

edited May 23 '17 at 12:18

Community

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answered Dec 13 '10 at 17:54

athspk

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score 62 · Answer 2 · answered Dec 13 '10 at 17:54

62

Just execute env in a terminal.

Example output:

$ env
TERM=xterm
SHELL=/bin/bash
USER=joksnet
USERNAME=joksnet
DESKTOP_SESSION=gnome
PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/games
PWD=/home/joksnet
GDM_KEYBOARD_LAYOUT=us
LANG=en_US.utf8
HOME=/home/joksnet
DISPLAY=:0.0
COLORTERM=gnome-terminal
_=/usr/bin/env

answered Dec 13 '10 at 17:54

joksnet

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`env | sort` to sort as well – wisbucky Jan 03 '14 at 18:55
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`env | sort | grep 'USER'` to sort and filter – Dmitri Pavlutin Aug 19 '16 at 14:58

score 12 · Answer 3 · answered Dec 13 '10 at 17:53

12

Type export without any parameters.

answered Dec 13 '10 at 17:53

Ronnie Howell

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Though `export` print some unneeded info (`declare -x`), I like that it sorts the variables by name – warvariuc Mar 24 '15 at 16:27

score 11 · Answer 4 · answered Dec 13 '10 at 18:02

Or set:

SET(P)                                                                  POSIX Programmer’s Manual                                                                  SET(P)

NAME
       set - set or unset options and positional parameters

SYNOPSIS
       set [-abCefmnuvx][-h][-o option][argument...]

       set [+abCefmnuvx][+h][+o option][argument...]

       set -- [argument...]

       set -o

       set +o

DESCRIPTION
       If  no  options or arguments are specified, set shall write the names and values of all shell variables in the collation sequence of the current locale. Each name
       shall start on a separate line, using the format:

              "%s=%s\n", <name>, <value>

       The value string shall be written with appropriate quoting; see the description of shell quoting in Quoting . The output shall be  suitable  for  reinput  to  the
       shell, setting or resetting, as far as possible, the variables that are currently set; read-only variables cannot be reset.

`env` or `printenv` are better. In bash, `set` will also print all your defined functions, which on a system like ubuntu, is a *very* long printout. — JimB, Dec 13 '10 at 21:01

What are my environment variables?

4 Answers4

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