How can I define a global variable?

kloss · 02-21-2006, 03:28 AM

Hi all,
I want to define a global variable. If I do:

Code:

foo="bar"

the variable is only defined for the current term, not for the terms I'm going to open.

If I do:

Code:

export foo="bar"

it is not better, because my variable is not a classical environment variable like PATH or TERM, but a "personal" one.

I don't want to set the variable in a configuration file like .bashrc, because the variable changes from time to time (it is not the same during the whole session).

Which command do I have to use?

Thanks in advance ++
Kloss

jlliagre · 02-21-2006, 03:47 AM

No shell variable will cross different terminals.
Use a file to store the content, and have the variable being updated on the other terminals by reading again that file.

kloss · 02-21-2006, 03:54 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jlliagre

No shell variable will cross different terminals.
Use a file to store the content, and have the variable being updated on the other terminals by reading again that file.

Yeah, that would be an easy way... but it is somewhat "dirty". It's a bit curious that there is no clean way to do that with linux.

Anyway, thanks for your quick answer

jlliagre · 02-21-2006, 04:07 AM

I don't feel it is dirty.

Should you really need that feature, a way to implement it would be to patch the shell source code to have a shared memory pool accessible by every shell instance, and have some variables content stored there. Not a quick job.

kloss · 02-21-2006, 04:30 AM

Quote:

Should you really need that feature, a way to implement it would be to patch the shell source code to have a shared memory pool accessible by every shell instance, and have some variables content stored there. Not a quick job.

Good idea! I'm gonna learn C, get to know the shell source code and register the http://regedit.sourceforge.net web page

Actually it was just to get a small script running, and the file trick works, so I will keep this easy solution ^^

Bye ++