Introduction
I love fish 🐟 shell because of its convenient auto suggestions and excellent performance.
I had, however, a slightly serious problem on switching from bash.
I didn't know how to use a modified environment in commands.
For example, I was in search for how to change the names of home subdirectories, and found the bash solution like this 🤔:
LANG=C xdg-user-dirs-gtk-update
This means running the xdg-user-dirs-gtk-update command with setting "C" for the LANG environment.
Running the same command failed in fish shell...🥴
I, however, didn't feel like always using an additional step such as the bash command or set.
I wrote this post so as to demonstrate how to solve it.
* Besides: Just today, I found fish prints the great error message. Holy mackerel! :
fish: Unsupported use of '='. To run 'xdg-user-dirs-gtk-update' with a modified environment, please use 'env LANG=C xdg-user-dirs-gtk-update…'
Body
In order to set a modified environment, it's possible in bash by using the SOME_ENV=value format at the top:
EDITOR=vi git commit
It's also the same about ksh / zsh.
But not about fish!
There isn't any solution? Yes. It's possible if we use env command 😊:
SOME_VAR=1 commandproduces an error:Unknown command "SOME_VAR=1".
Use theenvcommand.
env SOME_VAR=1 command
You can also declare a local variable in a block:
The env SOME_ENV=value format works nicely!!
env SOME_ENV=vi git commit
It's the same about tcsh.
Conclusion
| Shell | Version | Grammar |
|---|---|---|
| bash | 5.0.2 |
*Note: It seems ignored if |
| ksh | 5.2.14 | |
| zsh | 5.7.1 | |
| fish | 3.0.2 | env SOME_ENV=value command |
| tsch | 6.20.0 |
References And My Thanks To
Happy operating 🐈
Top comments (4)
What are the benefits of fish? Or I guess any alternative shell. I’ve always used Bash mostly because it comes with macOS (on my Ubuntu servers), but I constantly see references to zsh and fish.
Hi, Dylan, thank you for your sending a question :)
You use macOS and Ubuntu.
The benefits of fish I am especially given are:
On the other hand, one of fish's cons is perhaps not to support POSIX, so some may feel bewildered because of the difference of the grammars.
I am one who don't care about it.
I think it's about not "which is better" but "which is pleasant for me in the situation" :)
Besides, I sometimes use bash with Linux or tcsh with FreeBSD.
Well, have you ever read this Boris' great article?
CLI Love Inside ❤️
🇫🇷 Boris Jamot
I believe It helps you :)
Thank! I'll check it out.
Hi, Erick, thank you so much for your kind lesson.
I have updated my post following your messages :)
I have to learn more and also use right words.