ENVIRON(7) BSD Miscellaneous Information Manual ENVIRON(7)NAMEenviron — 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). BLOCKSIZE may be specified in
units of a byte by specifying a number, in units of a kilobyte
by specifying a number followed by ``K'' or ``k'', in units of
a megabyte by specifying a number followed by ``M'' or ``m''
and in units of a gigabyte by specifying a number followed by
``G'' or ``g''. Sizes less than 512 bytes or greater than a
gigabyte are ignored.
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.
MAIL The location of the user's mailbox instead of the default in
/var/mail, used by mail(1), sh(1), and many other mailclients.
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. See TERMPATH 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 a TERMPATH
of “$HOME/.termcap:/etc/termcap”. TERMPATH is ignored if
TERMCAP contains a full pathname.
TMPDIR The directory in which to store temporary files. Most appli‐
cations 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 informa‐
tion.
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 fre‐
quently exported by .profile files, such as MAIL, PS1, PS2, and IFS,
unless you know what you are doing.
SEE ALSOcd(1), csh(1), ex(1), login(1), sh(1), execve(2), execle(3), getenv(3),
setenv(3), setlocale(3), system(3), termcap(3), termcap(5)HISTORY
The environ manual page appeared in 4.2BSD.
BSD April 19, 1994 BSD
