Using export in .bashrc
You only need export
for variables that should be "seen" by other programs which you launch in the shell, while the ones that are only used inside the shell itself don't need to be export
ed.
This is what the man page says:
The supplied names are marked for automatic export to the environ‐
ment of subsequently executed commands. If the -f option is given,
the names refer to functions. If no names are given, or if the -p
option is supplied, a list of all names that are exported in this
shell is printed. The -n option causes the export property to be
removed from each name. If a variable name is followed by =word,
the value of the variable is set to word. export returns an exit
status of 0 unless an invalid option is encountered, one of the
names is not a valid shell variable name, or -f is supplied with a
name that is not a function.
This can be demonstrated with the following:
$ MYVAR="value"
$ echo ${MYVAR}
value
$ echo 'echo ${MYVAR}' > echo.sh
$ chmod +x echo.sh
$ ./echo.sh
$ export MYVAR="value-exported"
$ ./echo.sh
value-exported
Explanation:
- I first set
${MYVAR}
to be a Shell variable withMYVAR="value"
. Usingecho
I can echo the value of it because echo is part of the shell. - Then I create
echo.sh
. That's a little script that basically does the same, it just echoes${MYVAR}
, but the difference is that it will run in a different process because it's a separate script. - When calling
echo.sh
it outputs nothing, because the new process does not inherit${MYVAR}
- Then I export
${MYVAR}
into my environment with theexport
keyword - When I now run the same
echo.sh
again, it echoes the content of${MYVAR}
because it gets it from the environment
So to answer your question:
It depends where a variable is going to be used, whether you have to export it or not.
Use export
for environment variables. Environment variables are an operating system feature. Environment variables are inherited by child processes: if you set them in a shell, they're available in all the programs started by this shell. Variables used by many applications or by specific applications other than shells are environment variables. Here are a few examples of common environment variables:
HOME
— indicates the user's home directory, which is where per-user configuration files are located. Used by any program that reads per-user configuration files or otherwise needs to know the location of the user's home directory.PATH
— indicates where to find executable files to launch other programs. Used by every program that needs to start another program.LD_LIBRARY_PATH
— indicates where to find dynamic library files. Used by every dynamically linked executable.EDITOR
,VISUAL
— indicates what program to run when an editor is needed. Used by any program that needs to launch a text editor.DISPLAY
,XAUTHORITY
— indicates how to connect to the X11 server. Used by X11 clients (i.e. GUI programs).LESS
— options automatically turned on whenless
is run. Used byless
.http_proxy
— indicates the web proxy to use. Used by most web browsers.
Do not use export
for shell variables. Shell variables are a feature of the shell as a programming language. Shell variables are used only inside the shell where they are set; they have no meaning to programs launched by the shell. Shell variables are duplicated when a subshell is created, like the rest of the shell state. Here are a few examples of shell variables that have a meaning to popular shells:
PS1
— the prompt to display before each command.IFS
— the characters that separate words in unquoted variable expansions and command substitutions.HISTFILE
— a file where the shell will write the command history.
In addition to variables that are used by the shell, most shell scripts use variables for their internal purposes.
Most environment variables (e.g. PATH
) make sense for a whole session, and should be set in ~/.profile
or a similar file. Variables that make sense only to a specific shell (e.g. PS1
) should be set in a shell-specific file such as ~/.bashrc
or ~/.zshrc
. See Is there a ".bashrc" equivalent file read by all shells?
For bash internal variables you do not need export
. From your example
HISTTIMEFORMAT
is used by bash itself and does not need an export
MYSQL_HISTFILE
is for mysql
and that needs export otherwise mysql
does not see it.