Set environment variables from file of key value pairs

Question

TL DR  How do I export a set of key value pairs from a text file into the shell environment     For the record  below is the original version of the question  with examples   I m writing a script in bash which parses files with 3 variables in a certain folder  this is one of them   MINIENTREGA FECHALIMITE  2011-03-31  MINIENTREGA FICHEROS  informe txt programa c  MINIENTREGA DESTINO    destino entrega-prac1    This file is stored in   conf prac1  My script minientrega sh then parses the file using this code   cat   conf  1   while read line  do     export  line done   But when I execute minientrega sh prac1 in the command line it doesn t set the environment variables  I also tried using source   conf  1 but the same problem still applies  Maybe there is some other way to do this  I just need to use the environment variables of the file I pass as the argument of my script

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The shortest way I found   Your  env file   VARIABLE NAME  A VALUE    Then just       env  amp  amp  echo   VARIABLE NAME    Bonus  Because it s a short one-liner  it s very useful in package json file     scripts          echo variable         env  amp  amp  echo   VARIABLE NAME

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Improving on Silas Paul s answer  exporting the variables on a subshell makes them local to the command     export   cat  env   xargs   amp  amp  rails c

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t   mktemp   amp  amp  export -p  gt    t   amp  amp  set -a  amp  amp       env  amp  amp  set  a  amp  amp      t   amp  amp  rm   t   amp  amp  unset t   How it works   Create temp file  Write all current environment variables values to the temp file  Enable exporting of all declared variables in the sources script to the environment  Read  env file  All variables will be exported into current environment  Disable exporting of all declared variables in the sources script to the environment  Read the contents of the temp file  Every line would have declare -x VAR  val  that would export each of the variables into environment  Remove temp file  Unset the variable holding temp file name    Features   Preserves values of the variables already set in the environment  env can have comments  env can have empty lines  env does not require special header or footer like in the other answers  set -a and set  a   env does not require to have export for every value one-liner

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Not exactly sure why  or what I missed  but after running trough most of the answers and failing  I realized that with this  env file  MY VAR  quot hello there  quot  MY OTHER VAR 123  I could simply do this  source  env echo  MY VAR  Outputs  Hello there  Seems to work just fine in Ubuntu linux

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White spaces in the value  There are many great answers here  but I found them all lacking support for white space in the value   DATABASE CLIENT HOST host db-name db-user 0 0 0 0 0 md5   I have found 2 solutions that work whith such values with support for empty lines and comments   One based on sed and  javier-buzzi answer   source  lt  sed -e     d -e     d -e  s    declare -x   amp   g   env    And one with read line in a loop based on  john1024 answer   while read -r line  do declare -x   line   done  lt   lt  egrep -v        s       env    The key here is in using declare -x and putting line in double quotes  I don t know why but when you reformat the loop code to multiple lines it won t work     I m no bash programmer  I just gobbled together these  it s still magic to me

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The allexport option is mentioned in a couple of other answers here  for which set -a is the shortcut  Sourcing the  env really is better than looping over lines and exporting because it allows for comments  blank lines  and even environment variables generated by commands  My  bashrc includes the following      env loading in the shell dotenv        set -a     -f  env    amp  amp     env   set  a      Run dotenv on login dotenv    Run dotenv on every new directory cd        builtin cd      dotenv

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If env supports the -S option one may use newlines or escape characters like  n or  t  see env   env -S  quot   cat  env  quot  command   env file example  KEY  quot value with space nnewline ttab tand multiple lines quot   Test  env -S  quot   cat  env  quot  sh -c  echo  quot  KEY quot

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My requirements were    simple  env file without export prefixes  for compatibility with dotenv  supporting values in quotes  TEXT  alpha bravo charlie  supporting comments prefixed with   and empty lines universal for both mac BSD and linux GNU   Full working version compiled from the answers above     set -o allexport   eval   grep -v       env   sed  s   export       set  o allexport

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Simpler    grab the content of the file remove any blank lines  just incase you separated some stuff  remove any comments  just incase you added some     add export to all the lines eval the whole thing   eval   cat  env   sed -e     d -e     d -e  s   export      Another option  you don t have to run eval  thanks to  Jaydeep     export   cat  env   sed -e     d -e     d   xargs      Lastly  if you want to make your life REALLY easy  add this to your    bash profile   function source envfile     export   cat  1   sed -e     d -e     d   xargs       MAKE SURE YOU RELOAD YOUR BASH SETTINGS    source    bash profile or   just make a new tab window and problem solved  you call it like this  source envfile  env

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If you re getting an error because one of your variables contains a value that contains white spaces you can try to reset bash s IFS  Internal Field Separator  to  n to let bash interpret cat  env result as a list of parameters for the env executable   Example   IFS    n   env   cat  env  rails c   See also    http   tldp org LDP abs html internalvariables html IFSREF https   unix stackexchange com a 196761

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The problem with source is that it requires the file to have a proper bash syntax  and some special characters will ruin it      quot       lt    gt   and others  So in some cases you can t just source development env  This version  however  withstands every special character in values  set -a source  lt  cat development env         sed -e      d    s   d  -e  quot s          g quot  -e  quot s            1  g quot   set  a  Explanation   -a means that every bash variable would become an environment variable     d removes comments  strings that start with       s   d removes empty strings  including whitespace  quot s          g quot  replaces every single quote with       which is a trick sequence in bash to produce a quote     quot s            1  g quot  converts every a b into a  b   As a result  you are able to use special characters    To debug this code  replace source with cat and you ll see what this command produces

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How I save variables   printenv   sed  s    a-zA-Z0-9             export  1  quot  2 quot     gt  myvariables sh  How I load them source myvariables sh

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My  env file looks like   DATABASE URI  postgres   sa     localhost 5432 my db  VARIABLE 1  SOME VALUE  VALIABLE 2  123456788    Using the  henke s ways  the exported value ends up containing the quotation marks     postgres   sa     localhost 5432 my db   SOME VALUE   123456788    But I want the exported value to contain only   postgres   sa     localhost 5432 my db SOME VALUE 123456788   To fix it  I edit the command to delete the quotation marks   export   grep -v      dev env   tr --delete       xargs -d   n

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Here s my take on this  I had the following requirements   Ignore commented lines Allow spaces in the value Allow empty lines Ability to pass a custom env file while defaulting to  env Allow exporting as well as running commands inline Exit if env file doesn t exist  source env          quot    quot  -eq 1    amp  amp  env  quot  1 quot     env  quot  env quot      -f  quot  env quot         echo  quot Env file  env doesn t exist quot   return 1      eval   grep -Ev          quot  env quot    sed -e  s           quot  1 g  -e  s    quot  g  -e  s   export        Usage after saving the function to your  bash profile or equivalent  source env                  load default  env file source env  env dev         load custom  env file  source env  amp  amp  COMMAND      run command without saving vars to environment  Inspired by Javier and some of the other comments

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I found the most efficient way is   export   xargs  lt   env    Explanation  When we have a  env file like this   key val foo bar   run xargs  lt   env will get key val foo bar  so we will get an export key val foo bar and it s exactly what we need   Limitation   It doesn t handle cases where the values have spaces in them  Commands such as env produce this format       Shardj

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I came across this thread when I was trying reuse Docker --env-files in a shell   Their format is not bash compatible but it is simple  name value  no quoting  no substitution   They also ignore blank lines and   comments   I couldn t quite get it posix compatible  but here s one that should work in bash-like shells  tested in zsh on OSX 10 12 5 and bash on Ubuntu 14 04    while read -r l  do export    sed  s          lt  lt  lt  l      sed -E  s             lt  lt  lt  l    done  lt   lt  grep -E -v    s        your-env-file    It will not handle three cases in the example from the docs linked above    bash  export   123qwe bar   not a valid identifier bash  export   org spring config something   not a valid identifier and it will not handle the passthrough syntax  a bare FOO

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I use this  source  lt  cat  env       sed -E     s     d        tr   n    000        sed -z -E  s                1 x0 2 g        xargs -0 -n2 bash -c  printf  quot export  s  q  n quot   quot      quot    dev null   First Removing comments  sed -E     s     d   Then converting to null delimiters instead of newline  tr   n    000   Then replacing equal with null  sed -z -E  s                1 x0 2 g   Then printing pairs to valid quoted bash exports  using bash printf for  q   xargs -0 -n2 bash -c  printf  quot export  s  q  n quot   quot      quot    dev null  Then finally sourcing all of that  It should work for just about all cases with all special characters

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SAVE   set  o   grep allexport   amp  amp  set -o allexport  amp  amp     env  eval   SAVE   This will save restore your original options  whatever they may be   Using set -o allexport has the advantage of properly skipping comments without a regex   set  o by itself outputs all your current options in a format that bash can later execute   Also handy  set -o by itself  outputs all your current options in human-friendly format

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This might be helpful  export   cat  env   xargs   amp  amp  rails c  Reason why I use this is if I want to test  env stuff in my rails console  gabrielf came up with a good way to keep the variables local   This solves the potential problem when going from project to project  env   cat  env   xargs  rails  I ve tested this with bash 3 2 51 1 -release  Update  To ignore lines that start with    use this  thanks to Pete s comment   export   grep -v       env   xargs   And if you want to unset all of the variables defined in the file  use this  unset   grep -v       env   sed -E  s          1     xargs    Update  To also handle values with spaces  use  export   grep -v       env   xargs -d   n    on GNU systems -- or  export   grep -v       env   xargs -0   on BSD systems   From this answer you can auto-detect the OS with this  export-env sh    bin sh     Usage           export-env sh    COMMAND          export-env sh   echo   MINIENTREGA FECHALIMITE   unamestr   uname  if    quot  unamestr quot     Linux     then    export   grep -v       env   xargs -d   n    elif    quot  unamestr quot     FreeBSD     then    export   grep -v       env   xargs -0   fi

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try something like this  for line in  cat your env file   do if     line           then export  line  fi done

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Problem with your approach is the export in the while loop is happening in a sub shell  and those variable will not be available in current shell  parent shell of while loop    Add export command in the file itself   export MINIENTREGA FECHALIMITE  2011-03-31  export MINIENTREGA FICHEROS  informe txt programa c  export MINIENTREGA DESTINO    destino entrega-prac1    Then you need to source in the file in current shell using       conf prac1   OR  source   conf prac1

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Modified from  Dan Kowalczyk I put this in    bashrc  set -a      env  gt  dev null 2 gt  amp 1 set  a  Cross-compatible very well with Oh-my-Zsh s dotenv plugin   There is Oh-my-bash  but it doesn t have dotenv plugin

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You can use your original script to set the variables  but you need to call it the following way  with stand-alone dot        minientrega sh   Also there might be an issue with cat   while read approach  I would recommend to use the approach while read line  do      done  lt   FILE   Here is a working example    gt  cat test conf VARIABLE TMP1 some value   gt  cat run test sh   bin bash while read line  do export   line   done  lt  test conf echo  done    gt      run test sh done   gt  echo  VARIABLE TMP1 some value

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I have issues with the earlier suggested solutions     anubhava s solution makes writing bash friendly configuration files very annoying very fast  and also - you may not want to always export your configuration   Silas Paul solution breaks when you have variables that have spaces or other characters that work well in quoted values  but     makes a mess out of    Here is my solution  which is still pretty terrible IMO - and doesn t solve the  export only to one child  problem addressed by Silas  though you can probably run it in a sub-shell to limit the scope    source  conf-file export   cut -d  -f1  lt   conf-file

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-o allexport enables all following variable definitions to be exported   o allexport disables this feature   set -o allexport source conf-file set  o allexport

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Here s my variant     with env          set -a  amp  amp       env  amp  amp              compared with the previous solutions    it does not leak variables outside scope  values from  env are not exposed to caller  does not clobber set options returns exit code of the executed command uses posix compatible set -a uses   instead of source to avoid bashism command is not invoked if  env loading fails   with env rails console

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Here is another sed solution  which does not run eval or require ruby   source  lt  sed -E -n  s       export  amp   p     env    This adds export  keeping comments on lines starting with a comment    env contents  A 1  B 2   sample run    sed -E -n  s       export  amp   p     env export A 1  export B 2   I found this especially useful when constructing such a file for loading in a systemd unit file  with EnvironmentFile

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First  create an environment file that will have all the key-value pair of the environments like below and named it whatever you like in my case its env var env  MINIENTREGA FECHALIMITE  2011-03-31  MINIENTREGA FICHEROS  informe txt programa c  MINIENTREGA DESTINO    destino entrega-prac1    Then create a script that will export all the environment variables for the python environment like below and name it like export env sh     usr bin env bash  ENV FILE   1  CMD     2   set -o allexport source  ENV FILE set  o allexport   CMD   This script will take the first argument as the environment file then export all the environment variable in that file and then run the command after that   USAGE     export env sh env var env python app py

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My  env      bin bash set -a   export all variables   comments as usual  this is a bash script USER foo PASS bar  set  a  stop exporting variables   Invoking   source  env  echo  USER  echo  PASS   Reference https   unix stackexchange com questions 79068 how-to-export-variables-that-are-set-all-at-once

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For those who use ruby  I made a small utility gem called dotenv export  usage dotenv export is a small utility command which reads  env file and converts it into export statements using the ruby dotenv implementation    first install  dotenv export  gem install dotenv export  Then  in your  bash profile  or any shell environment in which you want to load the environment variables  execute following command  eval  quot   dotenv-export  path to  env  quot

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This one copes with spaces on the RHS  and skips  weird  vars such as bash module definitions  with      in them    echo    source this to set env vars   gt   bld dir  env env   while read line  do     lhs    line           rhs    line          if      lhs       0-9A-Za-z         then         echo  export  lhs    rhs     gt  gt   bld dir  env     fi done

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I work with docker-compose and  env files on Mac  and wanted to import the  env into my bash shell  for testing   and the  quot best quot  answer here was tripping up on the following variable   env NODE ARGS --expose-gc --max old space size 2048  Solution So I ended up using eval  and wrapping my env var defs in single quotes  eval   grep -v -e       env   xargs -I    echo export          Bash Version    bin bash --version GNU bash  version 3 2 57 1 -release  x86 64-apple-darwin18  Copyright  C  2007 Free Software Foundation  Inc

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Building on other answers  here is a way to export only a subset of lines in a file  including values with spaces like PREFIX ONE  a word    set -a    lt  grep       PREFIX   conf-file  set  a

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I have upvoted user4040650 s answer because it s both simple  and it allows comments in the file  i e  lines starting with     which is highly desirable for me  as comments explaining the variables can be added  Just rewriting in the context of the original question   If the script is callled as indicated  minientrega sh prac1  then minientrega sh could have   set -a   export all variables created next source  1 set  a   stop exporting    test that it works echo  Ficheros   MINIENTREGA FICHEROS    The following was extracted from the set documentation      This builtin is so complicated that it deserves its own section  set   allows you to change the values of shell options and set the   positional parameters  or to display the names and values of shell   variables       set  --abefhkmnptuvxBCEHPT   -o option-name   argument      set     abefhkmnptuvxBCEHPT    o option-name   argument            If no options or arguments are supplied  set displays the names and values of all shell   variables and functions  sorted according to the current locale  in a   format that may be reused as input for setting or resetting the   currently-set variables  Read-only variables cannot be reset  In POSIX   mode  only shell variables are listed       When options are supplied  they set or unset shell attributes    Options  if specified  have the following meanings       -a Each variable or function that is created or modified is given the export attribute and marked for export to the environment of   subsequent commands    And this as well      Using         rather than    -    causes these options to be turned off  The   options can also be used upon invocation of the shell  The current set   of options may be found in  -

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eval   cat  env   sed  s   export

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set -a     env txt set  a   If env txt is like   VAR1 1 VAR2 2 VAR3 3       Explanations  -a is equivalent to allexport  In other words  every variable assignment in the shell is exported into the environment  to be used by multiple child processes   More information can be found in the Set builtin documentation      -a  nbsp  nbsp  nbsp  Each variable or function that is created or modified is given the export attribute and marked for export to the environment of subsequent commands       Using         rather than    -    causes these options to be turned off  The options can also be used upon invocation of the shell  The current set of options may be found in  -

[bash] Set environment variables from file of key/value pairs

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