Basic shell script, please help

colly · 10-05-2004, 10:38 AM

Hi,
I have wrote the following shell script to set a variable, ran the script but the variable wont set?
Here it is:

#! /bin/bash
export VARIABLE=test

Any ideas on how to get it to work?
Thanks,
Colm

secesh · 10-05-2004, 10:39 AM

you must reference VARIABLE using $VARIABLE

your code works

Code:

#!/bin/bash
export VARIABLE=test
echo $VARIABLE

colly · 10-05-2004, 10:45 AM

No ive tried that and when I run the script it echos out VARIABLE and that works.
But when I close the script and echo VARIABLE VARIABLE is unset I get nothing

colly · 10-05-2004, 11:22 AM

No problem I worked out that i needed to run the script using
. ./.name instead of
./.name when setting a enviromental variable using the script, I have no idea why but it worked.

btmiller · 10-05-2004, 11:24 AM

Variables aren't exported from shell scripts back up to the parent's shell. If you want a shell script to set environment variables, you must source it (source <scriptname> or . <scriptname>) rather than running it normally.