How we can change linux environment variable in python?

Question

Let's say we are on a command line and we declare an environment variable:

export x=100

When i go to python and type :

os.environ['x'] = '100000'

If I came back to command line x stays 100. Is there any way to change this variable in python ?

Solution 1

There is no way to change the environment variables from a child process. And there is an exactly same question on SO.

Solution 2

There is a workaround to what you want to achieve. Assuming you use bash as your shell, you can write the changes to bash initialization files(I chose ~/.bashrc):

#!/usr/bin/python
import os
os.system('bash -c \'echo "export a=100000" >> ~/.bashrc\'')
os.system('bash -c \'source ~/.bashrc\'')

You need to prepend bash -c, since python uses sh as the default shell.

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Idea derived from a similar question on SO(different from the one falconer posted).

Comments

[Avindra Goolcharan]

This is the correct answer. If you really need it, you'll have to start with a shell script, call python, and have your python communicate back to the shell script (there's multiple ways to do IPC, do some research and figure out what works for you).