NAME
environ
—
user environment
SYNOPSIS
extern char **environ;
DESCRIPTION
An array of strings called the environment is made available by execve(2) when a process begins. By convention these strings have the form “name=value”. The following names are used by various commands:BLOCKSIZE
- The size of the block units used by several commands, most notably df(1), du(1) and ls(1). This variable is processed by the getbsize(3) function.
COLUMNS
- The user's preferred width in column positions for the terminal. Utilities such as ls(1) and who(1) use this to format output into columns. If unset or empty, utilities will use an ioctl(2) call to ask the terminal driver for the width.
EDITOR
- Default editor name.
EXINIT
- A startup list of commands read by ex(1) and vi(1).
HOME
- A user's login directory, set by login(1) from the password file passwd(5).
LANG
- This variable configures all programs which use
setlocale(3) to use the specified locale unless the
LC_*
variables are set. LC_ALL
- Overrides the values of
LC_COLLATE
,LC_CTYPE
,LC_MESSAGES
,LC_MONETARY
,LC_NUMERIC
,LC_TIME
andLANG
. LC_COLLATE
- Locale to be used for ordering of strings.
LC_CTYPE
- Locale to be used for character classification (letter, space, digit, etc.) and for interpreting byte sequences as multibyte characters.
LC_MESSAGES
- Locale to be used for diagnostic messages.
LC_MONETARY
- Locale to be used for interpreting monetary input and formatting output.
LC_NUMERIC
- Locale to be used for interpreting numeric input and formatting output.
LC_TIME
- Locale to be used for interpreting dates input and for formatting output.
MAIL
- The location of the user's mailbox instead of the default in /var/mail, used by mail(1), sh(1), and many other mail clients.
NLSPATH
- List of directories to be searched for the message catalog referred to by
LC_MESSAGES
. See catopen(3). PAGER
- Default paginator program. The program specified by this variable is used by mail(1), man(1), ftp(1), etc, to display information which is longer than the current display.
PATH
- The sequence of directories, separated by colons, searched by
csh(1), sh(1),
system(3),
execvp(3), etc, when looking for an executable file.
PATH
is set to ``/usr/bin:/bin'' initially by login(1). PRINTER
- The name of the default printer to be used by lpr(1), lpq(1), and lprm(1).
PWD
- The current directory pathname.
SHELL
- The full pathname of the user's login shell.
TERM
- The kind of terminal for which output is to be prepared. This information is used by commands, such as nroff(1) which may exploit special terminal capabilities. See /usr/share/misc/termcap (termcap(5)) for a list of terminal types.
TERMCAP
- The string describing the terminal in
TERM
, or, if it begins with a '/', the name of the termcap file. SeeTERMPATH
below, and termcap(5). TERMPATH
- A sequence of pathnames of termcap files, separated by colons or spaces,
which are searched for terminal descriptions in the order listed. Having
no
TERMPATH
is equivalent to aTERMPATH
of “$HOME/.termcap:/etc/termcap”.TERMPATH
is ignored ifTERMCAP
contains a full pathname. TMPDIR
- The directory in which to store temporary files. Most applications use either /tmp or /var/tmp. Setting this variable will make them use another directory.
TZ
- The timezone to use when displaying dates. The normal format is a pathname relative to “/usr/share/zoneinfo”. For example, the command “env TZ=America/Los_Angeles date” displays the current time in California. See tzset(3) for more information.
USER
- The login name of the user.
Further names may be placed in the environment by the
export(1) command and name=value arguments in
sh(1), or by the
setenv(1) command if you use
csh(1). It is unwise to change certain
sh(1) variables that are frequently exported by
.profile files, such as
MAIL
, PS1
,
PS2
, and IFS
, unless you
know what you are doing.
The current environment variables can be printed with
env(1), set(1) or
printenv(1) in
sh(1) and
env(1),
printenv(1) or the printenv
built-in
command in csh(1).
SEE ALSO
cd(1), csh(1), env(1), ex(1), login(1), printenv(1), sh(1), execve(2), execle(3), getbsize(3), getenv(3), setenv(3), setlocale(3), system(3), termcap(3), termcap(5), nls(7)
HISTORY
The environ
manual page appeared in
4.2BSD.