Set Environment Variables in Your Bash Shell From a .env File (Version 2)

Published: 2021-01-14 • Last updated: 2021-05-03

This post is version 2 of Set Environment Variables in Your Bash Shell From a Env File.

The advantage is it supports quoted values that contain spaces.

# .env file

# Some comment
FULL_NAME="First Middle Last"
FOO=bar

# setenv.sh script

#!/usr/bin/env bash

# Show env vars
grep -v '^#' .env

# Export env vars
set -o allexport
source .env
set +o allexport

# Usage

1. Unset env vars

    unset FULL_NAME; unset FOO;
   

2. Set env vars in your Bash shell

    source setenv.sh;
   

3. Confirm env vars

    echo ${FULL_NAME}; echo ${FOO};