Export environment variables using Go program not working in bash

Getting Help
1

Hi,
I’m a beginner to go and i’m trying to write a program to set the environment values using go code. The env value should be visible when i run export command in bash terminal after executing the go code.

When i run the program it ran successfully os.Getenv and os.Setenv but when i run “export” command (after code execution exits) in shell to see the environment variable “KEY_ID” / “SECRET_ID” and its values i dont see it.

Example code:

package main

import (
“fmt”
“os”
)

func main() {
var err error
if err != nil {
panic(err)
}
os.Setenv(“KEY_ID”, “Hello”)
os.Setenv(“SECRET_ID”, “world”)
fmt.Println(os.Getenv(“KEY_ID”))
fmt.Println(os.Getenv(“SECRET_ID”))
}
Output:
Hello
world

Expected:
after this i ran “export” command in terminal window to see the key “KEY_ID” & “SECRET_ID” are exist but i dont see it.

Please advise where i’m wrong and how to achieve it.

2

This is not possible. You can not set the environment of your parents.

What you could do is to print a bash script to the programs stdout and use use bash’s builtin eval to evcaluate that script:

package main

import "fmt"

func main() {
  fmt.Println("export KEY_ID=Hello")
  fmt.Println("export SECRET_ID=world")
}

$ eval $(go run main.go)
$ printenv KEY_ID
Hello
$ printenv SECRET_ID
world
1 Like
3

Thanks Nobbz. I wanted to achieve it through go code. Can i run this command eval $(go run main.go) through go?. Hope that will not work right?

4

No. As I said, you can not alter your parent processes environment.

The only way to come close to what you want is to print a script which you eval in the parent as shown.

5

Thanks!

6

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