The Zsh shell (Z Shell) is a powerful and feature-rich command-line interpreter for Unix-like operating systems. It provides various ways to customize your shell environment to improve productivity and convenience. One of the essential aspects of shell customization is managing environment variables.

Environment variables are predefined variables that contain information about the system environment and can be accessed by shell scripts and commands. In this blog post, we will explore how to use and manipulate environment variables in Zsh.

Accessing Environment Variables

To access the value of an environment variable in Zsh, you use the syntax $VAR_NAME, where VAR_NAME is the name of the variable. For example, to access the value of the PATH environment variable, you would use $PATH.

echo $PATH

Defining Environment Variables

To define a new environment variable in Zsh, you can use the export built-in command. The general syntax is export VAR_NAME=VALUE. For example, to define a MY_VAR variable with a value of test, you would run:

export MY_VAR="test"

You can use single or double quotes around the value, depending on your requirements.

Persistent Environment Variables

To make an environment variable persist across terminal sessions, you need to add the export command to a shell initialization file. In Zsh, this file is usually ~/.zshrc.

Open the ~/.zshrc file in a text editor and add the following line to define a persistent environment variable:

export MY_VAR="test"

Save the file and then either restart your terminal or run the following command to apply the changes:

source ~/.zshrc

Modifying Environment Variables

To modify the value of an existing environment variable, you can simply redefine it using the export command. For example, to add a new directory to your PATH variable, you would do the following:

export PATH="$PATH:/new_directory"

This appends the /new_directory to the existing PATH value.

Unsetting Environment Variables

If you need to remove an environment variable, you can use the unset built-in command. For example, to remove the MY_VAR variable, run the following command:

unset MY_VAR

Conclusion

Managing environment variables in Zsh is straightforward and allows you to customize your shell environment to suit your needs. Whether you need to define new variables, modify existing ones, or remove unwanted ones, Zsh provides all the necessary tools. By mastering these techniques, you can enhance your productivity and streamline your command-line experience.

Start exploring the power of Zsh by leveraging environment variables in your Linux system today!