How to set environment variables in bash and zsh

Aug 27, 2017updated Dec 30, 2018

Learn how to set environment variables in Bash and zsh with export, how to persist them in .bashrc or .zshrc, and the env prefix trick for the Fish shell.

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The operation is the same on both Bash and zsh, with the caveat that to persist them you need to use .bashrc and .zshrc, respectively.

Setting them in the shell is the same:

$ export VARIABLE=something

To make sure it was set, type

$ $VARIABLE

If you edit a dot file, to apply the changes to the current shell use source .dotfile.

This works for Bash and Zsh.

With Fish you prepend env:

env API_KEY=123123 node app.js

Tagged: CLI · All topics

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