Export variables from one shell script to another.

Question

Hi,

I have a couple of scripts for which the first part of them looks the same. Function of this part is to identify at which machine the script is being runned and set a couple of variables accordingly. It looks something like this:

   ENV=`echo $LOGNAME | cut -c1-8`
if  [ $ENV = "vrt3400b" ]
then
   echo "Using TEST specific settings."
   NAME_PREFIX="tst"
   GROUP_NUMBER=`echo $USER | cut -c4-5`
   GROUP_NUMBER_SUFFIX=00`echo $USER | cut -c8-9`
   ...
elif [ $ENV = "vrp3400a" ]
then
   echo "Using PROD specific settings."
   NAME_PREFIX="prd"
   ...

The problem is that as the number of scripts grow the overhead of maintaining small changes gets very time consuming.

I extracted the above part and put it into a separate script, that is then called by all the other scripts. But the variables are fo course not forwarded to the other scripts. Tried export NAME_PREFIX="tst" aswell but it didn't work.

Could anyone give me a hint on which approach I should use to solve the problem?

I was thinking about letting the part identifiying the environment, write properties to file which can then be passed to other scripts. But it seems that there must be a more straightforward approach.

// Mike

Answer 1

Initializing script (1.sh)

a=123
b=abc

export a b

Application script

#!/bin/sh

. 1.sh

echo \$a: $a
echo \$b: $b