shell - How to write a bash script to set global environment variable?

Question

Recently I wrote a script which sets an environment variable, take a look:

#!/bin/bash

echo "Pass a path:"
read path
echo $path

defaultPath=/home/$(whoami)/Desktop

if [ -n "$path" ]; then
    export my_var=$path
else
    echo "Path is empty! Exporting default path ..."
    export my_var=$defaultPath
fi

echo "Exported path: $my_var"

It works just great but the problem is that my_var is available just locally, I mean in console window where I ran the script.

How to write a script which allow me to export global environment variable which can be seen everywhere?

Answer 1

Just run your shell script preceded by "." (dot space).

This causes the script to run the instructions in the original shell. Thus the variables still exist after the script finish

Ex:

cat setmyvar.sh
export myvar=exists

. ./setmyvar.sh

echo $myvar
exists