DESCRIPTION

The variable environ points to an array of pointers to strings called the "environment". The last pointer in this array has the value NULL. This array of strings is made available to the process by the execve(2) call when a new program is started. When a child process is created via fork(2), it inherits a copy of its parent's environment.

By convention, the strings in environ have the form "name=value". The name is case-sensitive and may not contain the character "=". The value can be anything that can be represented as a string. The name and the value may not contain an embedded null byte ('\0'), since this is assumed to terminate the string.

Environment variables may be placed in the shell's environment by the export command in sh(1), or by the setenv command if you use csh(1).

The initial environment of the shell is populated in various ways, such as definitions from /etc/environment that are processed by pam_env(8) for all users at login time (on systems that employ pam(8)). In addition, various shell initialization scripts, such as the system-wide /etc/profile script and per-user initializations script may include commands that add variables to the shell's environment; see the manual page of your preferred shell for details.

Bourne-style shells support the syntax

NAME=value command

to create an environment variable definition only in the scope of the process that executes command. Multiple variable definitions, separated by white space, may precede command.

Arguments may also be placed in the environment at the point of an exec(3). A C program can manipulate its environment using the functions getenv(3), putenv(3), setenv(3), and unsetenv(3).

What follows is a list of environment variables typically seen on a system. This list is incomplete and includes only common variables seen by average users in their day-to-day routine. Environment variables specific to a particular program or library function are documented in the ENVIRONMENT section of the appropriate manual page.

Note that the behavior of many programs and library routines is influenced by the presence or value of certain environment variables. Examples include the following:

NOTES

Historically and by standard, environ must be declared in the user program. However, as a (nonstandard) programmer convenience, environ is declared in the header file <unistd.h> if the _GNU_SOURCE feature test macro is defined (see feature_test_macros(7)).

The prctl(2) PR_SET_MM_ENV_START and PR_SET_MM_ENV_END operations can be used to control the location of the process's environment.

The HOME, LOGNAME, SHELL, and USER variables are set when the user is changed via a session management interface, typically by a program such as login(1) from a user database (such as passwd(5)). (Switching to the root user using su(1) may result in a mixed environment where LOGNAME and USER are retained from old user; see the su(1) manual page.)

BUGS

Clearly there is a security risk here. Many a system command has been tricked into mischief by a user who specified unusual values for IFS or LD_LIBRARY_PATH.

There is also the risk of name space pollution. Programs like make and autoconf allow overriding of default utility names from the environment with similarly named variables in all caps. Thus one uses CC to select the desired C compiler (and similarly MAKE, AR, AS, FC, LD, LEX, RM, YACC, etc.). However, in some traditional uses such an environment variable gives options for the program instead of a pathname. Thus, one has MORE, LESS, and GZIP. Such usage is considered mistaken, and to be avoided in new programs. The authors of gzip should consider renaming their option to GZIP_OPT.

SEE ALSO

bash(1), csh(1), env(1), login(1), printenv(1), sh(1), su(1), tcsh(1), execve(2), clearenv(3), exec(3), getenv(3), putenv(3), setenv(3), unsetenv(3), locale(7), ld.so(8), pam_env(8)