xref: /freebsd/share/man/man7/environ.7 (revision 0ea3482342b4d7d6e71f3007ce4dafe445c639fd)
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32.\"	@(#)environ.7	8.3 (Berkeley) 4/19/94
33.\"
34.Dd April 19, 1994
35.Dt ENVIRON 7
36.Os BSD 4.2
37.Sh NAME
38.Nm environ
39.Nd user environment
40.Sh SYNOPSIS
41.Ar extern char **environ ;
42.Sh DESCRIPTION
43An array of strings called the
44.Ar environment
45is made available by
46.Xr execve  2
47when a process begins.  By convention these strings have the form
48.Dq Ar name=value .
49The following names are used by various commands:
50.Bl -tag -width BLOCKSIZE
51.It Ev BLOCKSIZE
52The size of the block units used by several commands, most notably
53.Xr df 1 ,
54.Xr du 1
55and
56.Xr ls 1 .
57BLOCKSIZE may be specified in units of a byte by specifying a number,
58in units of a kilobyte by specifying a number followed by ``K'' or
59``k'', in units of a megabyte by specifying a number followed by ``M''
60or ``m'' and in units of a gigabyte by specifying a number followed
61by ``G'' or ``g''.
62Sizes less than 512 bytes or greater than a gigabyte are ignored.
63.It Ev EXINIT
64A startup list of commands read by
65.Xr ex  1  ,
66.Xr edit  1 ,
67and
68.Xr vi  1  .
69.It Ev HOME
70A user's login directory, set by
71.Xr login  1
72from the password file
73.Xr passwd  5  .
74.It Ev LANG
75This variable configure all programs which use
76.Xr \%setlocale 3
77to specified locale.
78.It Ev PATH
79The sequence of directories, separated by colons, searched by
80.Xr csh  1  ,
81.Xr sh  1 ,
82.Xr system  3  ,
83.Xr execvp  3 ,
84etc, when looking for an executable file.
85PATH is set to ``/usr/bin:/bin'' initially by
86.Xr login  1  .
87.It Ev PRINTER
88The name of the default printer to be used by
89.Xr lpr  1  ,
90.Xr lpq  1 ,
91and
92.Xr lprm  1  .
93.It Ev SHELL
94The full pathname of the user's login shell.
95.It Ev TERM
96The kind of terminal for which output is to be prepared.
97This information is used by commands, such as
98.Xr nroff  1
99or
100.Xr plot 1
101which may exploit special terminal capabilities.  See
102.Pa /usr/share/misc/termcap
103.Pq Xr termcap 5
104for a list of terminal types.
105.It Ev TERMCAP
106The string describing the terminal in TERM, or, if
107it begins with a '/', the name of the termcap file.
108See
109.Ev TERMPATH
110below,
111.Xr termcap  5  ,
112and
113.Xr termcap  .
114.It Ev TERMPATH
115A sequence of pathnames of termcap files, separated by colons or spaces,
116which are searched for terminal descriptions in the order listed.  Having
117no
118.Ev TERMPATH
119is equivalent to a
120.Ev TERMPATH
121of
122.Dq Pa $HOME/.termcap:/etc/termcap .
123.Ev TERMPATH
124is ignored if
125.Ev TERMCAP
126contains a full pathname.
127.It Ev TMPDIR
128The directory in which to store temporary files.
129Most applications use either
130.Dq /tmp
131or
132.Dq /var/tmp .
133Setting this variable will make them use another directory.
134.It Ev TZ
135The timezone to use when displaying dates.
136The normal format is a pathname relative to
137.Dq /usr/share/zoneinfo .
138For example, the command
139.Dq env TZ=US/Pacific date
140displays the current time in California.
141See
142.Xr tzset 3
143for more information.
144.It Ev USER
145The login name of the user.
146.El
147.Pp
148Further names may be placed in the environment by the
149.Xr export
150command and
151.Ar name=value
152arguments in
153.Xr sh  1  ,
154or by the
155.Xr setenv
156command if you use
157.Xr csh  1  .
158It is unwise to change certain
159.Xr sh  1
160variables that are frequently exported by
161.Pa .profile
162files, such as
163.Ev MAIL ,
164.Ev PS1 ,
165.Ev PS2 ,
166and
167.Ev IFS ,
168unless you know what you are doing.
169.Sh SEE ALSO
170.Xr csh 1 ,
171.Xr ex 1 ,
172.Xr login 1 ,
173.Xr sh 1 ,
174.Xr execve 2 ,
175.Xr execle 3 ,
176.Xr setlocale 3 ,
177.Xr system 3 ,
178.Xr termcap 3 ,
179.Xr termcap 5
180.Sh HISTORY
181The
182.Nm environ
183manual page appeared in
184.Bx 4.2 .
185