Content-type: text/html; charset=UTF-8 Man page of ENV

ENV

Section: User Commands (1)
Updated: June 2025
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NAME

env - run a program in a modified environment  

SYNOPSIS

env [,OPTION/]... [,-/] [,NAME=VALUE/]... [,COMMAND /[,ARG/]...]  

DESCRIPTION

Set each NAME to VALUE in the environment and run COMMAND.

Mandatory arguments to long options are mandatory for short options too.

-a, --argv0=,ARG/
pass ARG as the zeroth argument of COMMAND
-i, --ignore-environment
start with an empty environment
-0, --null
end each output line with NUL, not newline
-u, --unset=,NAME/
remove variable from the environment
-C, --chdir=,DIR/
change working directory to DIR
-S, --split-string=,S/
process and split S into separate arguments; used to pass multiple arguments on shebang lines
--block-signal[=,SIG/]
block delivery of SIG signal(s) to COMMAND
--default-signal[=,SIG/]
reset handling of SIG signal(s) to the default
--ignore-signal[=,SIG/]
set handling of SIG signal(s) to do nothing
--list-signal-handling
list non default signal handling to stderr
-v, --debug
print verbose information for each processing step
--help
display this help and exit
--version
output version information and exit

A mere - implies -i. If no COMMAND, print the resulting environment.

SIG may be a signal name like 'PIPE', or a signal number like '13'. Without SIG, all known signals are included. Multiple signals can be comma-separated. An empty SIG argument is a no-op.  

Exit status:

125
if the env command itself fails
126
if COMMAND is found but cannot be invoked
127
if COMMAND cannot be found
-
the exit status of COMMAND otherwise
 

SCRIPT OPTION HANDLING

The -S option allows specifying multiple arguments in a script. Running a script named 1.pl containing the following first line: 

#!/usr/bin/env -S perl -w -T
...

Will execute perl -w -T 1.pl

Without the '-S' parameter the script will likely fail with: 

/usr/bin/env: 'perl -w -T': No such file or directory

See the full documentation for more details.

 

NOTES

POSIX's exec(3p) pages says:
"many existing applications wrongly assume that they start with certain signals set to the default action and/or unblocked.... Therefore, it is best not to block or ignore signals across execs without explicit reason to do so, and especially not to block signals across execs of arbitrary (not closely cooperating) programs."
 

AUTHOR

Written by Richard Mlynarik, David MacKenzie, and Assaf Gordon.  

REPORTING BUGS

GNU coreutils online help: <https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/>
Report any translation bugs to <https://translationproject.org/team/>  

SEE ALSO

sigaction(2), sigprocmask(2), signal(7)


Full documentation <https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/env>
or available locally via: info '(coreutils) env invocation'


Packaged by Debian (9.7-3)
Copyright © 2025 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later <https://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>.
This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it.
There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.

 

Index

NAME
SYNOPSIS
DESCRIPTION
Exit status:
SCRIPT OPTION HANDLING
NOTES
AUTHOR
REPORTING BUGS
SEE ALSO
This document was created by man2html, using the manual pages.
Time: 11:48:43 GMT, September 14, 2026