A good first step in changing your environment is determining what environment you have. Using the steps in this section, you can discover which environment and shell variables are currently setincluding ones set in the configuration files as well as ones you've set for the current session (Code Listings 8.1 and 8.2). Code Listing 8.1. You can find out which variables exist in the zsh, bash, or ksh shells with set. [ejr@hobbes ejr]$ set BASH=/bin/bash BASH_VERSION=1.14.7(1) COLUMNS=80 ENV=/home/ejr/.bashrc EUID=500 HISTFILE=/home/ejr/.bash_history HISTFILESIZE=1000 HISTSIZE=1000 HOME=/home/ejr HOSTNAME=hobbes.raycomm.com HOSTTYPE=i386 IFS= LINES=24 LOGNAME=ejr MAIL=/var/spool/mail/ejr MAILCHECK=60 OLDPWD=/home/ejr/src/rpm-2.5.1 OPTERR=1 OPTIND=1 OSTYPE=Linux PATH=/usr/local/bin:/bin:/usr/bin:/usr/ X11R6/bin:/home/ejr/bin PPID=1943 PS1=[\u@\h \W]\$ PS2=> PS4=+ PWD=/home/ejr SHELL=/bin/bash SHLVL=3 TERM=vt220 UID=500 USER=ejr USERNAME= _=cd [ejr@hobbes ejr]$ | As you're going through these steps, you might check out the sidebar Variables in Your Environment You Shouldn't Touch in this section for a list of variables you should leave alone. Then, in the next section, check out Variables You Can Mess With to find ones you can change. To show your current environment in zsh, bash, or ksh: set At the shell prompt, type set. You'll see a list of the current environment and shell variables, as shown in Code Listing 8.1. Some of the variables may look familiar to you (such as the ones showing your shell or user name), while others are likely to be more cryptic (such as the line showing the last command you ran, in this case, _=cd). To show your current environment in csh: Code Listing 8.2. Or, use setenv to find out which variables exist in the csh shell at the c-shore. xmission> setenv HOME=/home/users/e/ejray PATH=/usr/local/bin:/usr/local/bin/X11:/ usr/openwin/bin:/usr/bin:/usr/ucb:/usr/. LOGNAME=ejray HZ=100 TERM=vt100 TZ=MST7MDT SHELL=/usr/bin/csh MAIL=/var/mail/ejray PWD=/home/users/e/ejray USER=ejray EDITOR=pico -t OPENWINHOME=/usr/openwin MANPATH=/usr/man:/usr/local/man:/usr/ openwin/man LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/local/lib:/usr/ openwin/lib PAGER=more xmission> | Tips If you do as we often do and try to use show to show the environment variables ("showing" the variables seems logical, right?), you might get a weird question about the standard mail directories and the MH mailer. Just press to return to your shell prompt. If the list of environment variables is long, you can pipe set or setenv to more so that you can read the variables one screen at a time. Try set | sort | more or setenv | sort | more. See Chapter 1 for a reminder about piping commands. Variables in Your Environment You Shouldn't Touch Before you go running off and changing your environment, note that there are some things you should really leave alone. These variables that the shell automatically sets affect how your Unix system works (or doesn't work, if you try to change some of these variables!). Some of these cannot be changed, but some can, with unpredictable results. When in doubt, don't. See the sidebar Variables You Can Mess With in the following section for a list of variables you can change. ZSH, BASH, AND KSH | CSH | DESCRIPTION |
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HISTCMD | | Keeps track of the number of the current command from the history. | HOSTTYPE | | Holds a string describing the type of hardware on which the shell is running. | IFS | | Specifies the characters that indicate the beginning or end of words. | LINENO | | Contains the number of the current line within the shell or a shell script. | OLDPWD | | Contains the previous working directory. | OSTYPE | | Holds a string describing the operating system on which the shell is running. | PPID | | Contains the process ID of the shell's parent. | PWD | cwd | Contains the current working directory. | RANDOM | | Contains a special value to generate random numbers. | SECONDS | | Contains the number of seconds since the shell was started. | SHELL | shell | Contains the name of the current shell. | SHLVL | | Contains a number indicating the sub-shell level (if SHLVL is 3, two parent shells exist and you'll have to exit from three total shells to completely log out). | UID | | Contains the userid of the current user. |
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