Setting an environment variable before a command in Bash is not working for the second command in a pipe

bash environment-variables
MartyMacGyver picture MartyMacGyver · Jun 1, 2012 · Viewed 269.2k times · Source

In a given shell, normally I'd set a variable or variables and then run a command. Recently I learned about the concept of prepending a variable definition to a command:

FOO=bar somecommand someargs

This works... kind of. It doesn't work when you're changing a LC_* variable (which seems to affect the command, but not its arguments, for example, '[a-z]' char ranges) or when piping output to another command thusly:

FOO=bar somecommand someargs | somecommand2  # somecommand2 is unaware of FOO

I can prepend somecommand2 with "FOO=bar" as well, which works, but which adds unwanted duplication, and it doesn't help with arguments that are interpreted depending on the variable (for example, '[a-z]').

So, what's a good way to do this on a single line?

I'm thinking something on the order of:

FOO=bar (somecommand someargs | somecommand2)  # Doesn't actually work

I got lots of good answers! The goal is to keep this a one-liner, preferably without using "export". The method using a call to Bash was best overall, though the parenthetical version with "export" in it was a little more compact. The method of using redirection rather than a pipe is interesting as well.

Answer

Paused until further notice. picture Paused until further notice. · Jun 1, 2012 
FOO=bar bash -c 'somecommand someargs | somecommand2'

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