printenv
is used to print out the environment variables. Environment variables are a common form of setting global values across a terminal session. Environment variables can be set by the systems, automation scripts, or by the user.
You can print your all environment variables using just printenv
.
If you want to print the value of a specific variable you can use printenv <variable name>
.
Conclusion
If you are ever stuck and want to know what was the value of the environment variable you can use it. I have found myself using this quite often when debugging issues in production or on my local machine.
If you liked this post please share it with others so that it can help them as well. You can tag me on Twitter @imumesh18. Also please follow me here and on Twitter for future blogs which I write over here
Top comments (3)
I haven't seen this before. I use
env
which is similar toprintenv
unix.stackexchange.com/questions/1...
View variables.
And to search:
Or just
I see you cover
env
in the next post for modifying environment but not for reading itHey, yes actually you can grep the output of the env and get the values or echo works as well. Most the people use what you have mentioned above and very few people are aware about printenv and how easy it is to use. That's the only reason wrote about it. Thanks for the feedback on the
env
blog, I will surely consinder adding more about reading a varibale.printenv FOO
is longer to type thanecho $FOO
and also it is less flexible. You can't do something likeecho "$FOO $BAR"
Maybe you can make an alias:
So you can run