CODEWITHSUNDEEP
environment-variablesunsetbash
sphaughton
sphaughton

Reputation: 71

Struggling to unset an environment variable in bash

I have previously set an environment variable using:

echo export "AVARIABLE=example" >> ~/.bash_profile

but now after using:

unset AVARIABLE

the env var remains when I open a new shell? What am I doing wrong here? Even running:

source ~/.bash_profile

does not work?

Upvotes: 2

Views: 5138

Answers (1)

5gon12eder
5gon12eder

Reputation: 25449

If you are opening a new shell, about the first thing it does is to source ~/.bash_profile. And there, the variable is set again.

If you want to get rid of it permanently, edit your ~/.bash_profile to remove the line in question again. (This will only take effect for new sessions.)

If you only want to unset it in your current shell, then unset is fine but as you've seen, it won't affect new invocations of the shell.

Upvotes: 4

Related Questions