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PROLOG | NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | RETURN VALUE | ERRORS | EXAMPLES | APPLICATION USAGE | RATIONALE | FUTURE DIRECTIONS | SEE ALSO | COPYRIGHT |
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GETENV(3P) POSIX Programmer's Manual GETENV(3P)
This manual page is part of the POSIX Programmer's Manual. The
Linux implementation of this interface may differ (consult the
corresponding Linux manual page for details of Linux behavior), or
the interface may not be implemented on Linux.
getenv — get value of an environment variable
#include <stdlib.h>
char *getenv(const char *name);
The functionality described on this reference page is aligned with
the ISO C standard. Any conflict between the requirements
described here and the ISO C standard is unintentional. This
volume of POSIX.1‐2017 defers to the ISO C standard.
The getenv() function shall search the environment of the calling
process (see the Base Definitions volume of POSIX.1‐2017, Chapter
8, Environment Variables) for the environment variable name if it
exists and return a pointer to the value of the environment
variable. If the specified environment variable cannot be found, a
null pointer shall be returned. The application shall ensure that
it does not modify the string pointed to by the getenv() function.
The returned string pointer might be invalidated or the string
content might be overwritten by a subsequent call to getenv(),
setenv(), unsetenv(),
or (if supported) putenv() but they shall not be affected by a
call to any other function in this volume of POSIX.1‐2017.
The returned string pointer might also be invalidated if the
calling thread is terminated.
The getenv() function need not be thread-safe.
Upon successful completion, getenv() shall return a pointer to a
string containing the value for the specified name. If the
specified name cannot be found in the environment of the calling
process, a null pointer shall be returned.
No errors are defined.
The following sections are informative.
Getting the Value of an Environment Variable
The following example gets the value of the HOME environment
variable.
#include <stdlib.h>
...
const char *name = "HOME";
char *value;
value = getenv(name);
None.
The clearenv() function was considered but rejected. The putenv()
function has now been included for alignment with the Single UNIX
Specification.
The getenv() function is inherently not thread-safe because it
returns a value pointing to static data.
Conforming applications are required not to directly modify the
pointers to which environ points, but to use only the setenv(),
unsetenv(), and putenv() functions, or assignment to environ
itself, to manipulate the process environment. This constraint
allows the implementation to properly manage the memory it
allocates. This enables the implementation to free any space it
has allocated to strings (and perhaps the pointers to them) stored
in environ when unsetenv() is called. A C runtime start-up
procedure (that which invokes main() and perhaps initializes
environ) can also initialize a flag indicating that none of the
environment has yet been copied to allocated storage, or that the
separate table has not yet been initialized. If the application
switches to a complete new environment by assigning a new value to
environ, this can be detected by getenv(), setenv(), unsetenv(),
or putenv() and the implementation can at that point reinitialize
based on the new environment. (This may include copying the
environment strings into a new array and assigning environ to
point to it.)
In fact, for higher performance of getenv(), implementations that
do not provide putenv() could also maintain a separate copy of the
environment in a data structure that could be searched much more
quickly (such as an indexed hash table, or a binary tree), and
update both it and the linear list at environ when setenv() or
unsetenv() is invoked. On implementations that do provide
putenv(), such a copy might still be worthwhile but would need to
allow for the fact that applications can directly modify the
content of environment strings added with putenv(). For example,
if an environment string found by searching the copy is one that
was added using putenv(), the implementation would need to check
that the string in environ still has the same name (and value, if
the copy includes values), and whenever searching the copy
produces no match the implementation would then need to search
each environment string in environ that was added using putenv()
in case any of them have changed their names and now match. Thus,
each use of putenv() to add to the environment would reduce the
speed advantage of having the copy.
Performance of getenv() can be important for applications which
have large numbers of environment variables. Typically,
applications like this use the environment as a resource database
of user-configurable parameters. The fact that these variables
are in the user's shell environment usually means that any other
program that uses environment variables (such as ls, which
attempts to use COLUMNS), or really almost any utility (LANG,
LC_ALL, and so on) is similarly slowed down by the linear search
through the variables.
An implementation that maintains separate data structures, or even
one that manages the memory it consumes, is not currently required
as it was thought it would reduce consensus among implementors who
do not want to change their historical implementations.
A future version may add one or more functions to access and
modify the environment in a thread-safe manner.
exec(1p), putenv(3p), setenv(3p), unsetenv(3p)
The Base Definitions volume of POSIX.1‐2017, Chapter 8,
Environment Variables, stdlib.h(0p)
Portions of this text are reprinted and reproduced in electronic
form from IEEE Std 1003.1-2017, Standard for Information
Technology -- Portable Operating System Interface (POSIX), The
Open Group Base Specifications Issue 7, 2018 Edition, Copyright
(C) 2018 by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers,
Inc and The Open Group. In the event of any discrepancy between
this version and the original IEEE and The Open Group Standard,
the original IEEE and The Open Group Standard is the referee
document. The original Standard can be obtained online at
http://www.opengroup.org/unix/online.html .
Any typographical or formatting errors that appear in this page
are most likely to have been introduced during the conversion of
the source files to man page format. To report such errors, see
https://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/reporting_bugs.html .
IEEE/The Open Group 2017 GETENV(3P)
Pages that refer to this page: stdlib.h(0p), exec(3p), putenv(3p), setenv(3p), unsetenv(3p)
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HTML rendering created 2025-09-06 by Michael Kerrisk, author of The Linux Programming Interface. For details of in-depth Linux/UNIX system programming training courses that I teach, look here. Hosting by jambit GmbH. |
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