View All Variables

Sometimes you need to see all the environment variables at once, not just one at a time. The env command displays every environment variable currently set in your shell session.

env

This outputs a list of variable names and their values, each on its own line in the format NAME=value. You'll see familiar ones like HOME and USER, along with many others the system sets automatically.

The printenv command works similarly. Without arguments, it shows all variables just like env. You can also use it to display a specific variable without the $ prefix:

# Show all variables
printenv

# Show a specific variable
printenv HOME

Since the output can be quite long, you might want to combine these commands with tools you've already learned. For example, piping to grep helps you find specific variables:

env | grep PATH

This filters the output to show only lines containing "PATH", making it easier to find what you're looking for in the sea of environment variables.