We can view these variables using various commands. Various Linux shells keep track of their predefined shell and environment variables. They are commonly used to store temporary data and are automatically destroyed once the shell session is terminated.Įach shell such as Bash, ZSH, fish, and others contain their own set of shell variables. On the other hand, Shell variables are available within the shell in which they are defined or set. You should not include spaces around the equal sign (=).Įnvironment variables are global variables inherited by all shells and their corresponding child processes. It is recommended to use UPPERCASE names for environment variables to distinguish them within other contexts. The purpose of environment variables is to provide a simple medium where the shell can fetch or set settings related to the system.Įnvironment variables take the following format:Įnvironment variables are case-sensitive. Such information is gathered from configuration files such as. In Linux and other Unix-based systems, every time we launch a new shell session, it initializes a process to gather the information that should be available within that shell session and all its child processes. Let us take a moment to understand how environment variables work.

This guide will discuss how to interact with environment variables, reading, and setting environment variables using the ZSH shell. You can customize the values of environment variables, with the changes reflected globally on all the applications launched from the shell.

Environment variables refer to a set of dynamic variable names that store a value that applications from the Linux shell can use.Įnvironment variables come as key-value pairs where the key represents the variable’s name and a value. If you have ever used the Linux terminal, you are probably aware of environment variables.

Mac os list environment variables