env(1)

env1

Set and print environment

Usage

env [-i] [-u name] [name=value ...] [utility [argument ...]]

Overview

env executes utility after modifying the environment as specified on the command line. The option name=value specifies an environment variable, name, with a value of value.

The options are as follows:

-i

Causes env to completely ignore the environment it inherits.

-u name

Remove name from the environment.

If no utility is specified, env prints out the names and values of the variables in the environment, with one name=value pair per line.

env doesn't handle commands with equal (‘=’) signs in their names, for obvious reasons.

Exit status

The env utility exits with one of the following values:

0

env completed successfully and, if utility was specified, it was invoked and completed successfully too.

1

An invalid command line option was passed to env and utility was not invoked, or utility was invoked but failed with exit status 1.

2–125, 128–255

utility was invoked but failed with this exit status; see its manual page for more information.

126

utility was found but could not be invoked, or it was invoked but failed with exit status 126.

127

utility could not be found, or it was invoked but failed with exit status 127.

Releases

61 releases since OpenBSD 2.1; the text changed 14 times.

  1. 2.1–2.3
  2. 2.4–2.5
  3. 2.6
  4. 2.7
  5. 2.8
  6. 2.9–3.3
  7. 3.4
  8. 3.5–3.9
  9. 4.0–4.1
  10. 4.2–4.4
  11. 4.5–4.8
  12. 4.9–5.5
  13. 5.6
  14. 5.7–7.5
  15. 7.6–8.0

-i since OpenBSD 2.7; -u since OpenBSD 7.6.

Standards

The env utility is compliant with the IEEE Std 1003.1-2008 (“POSIX.1”) specification. The flag [-u] is an extension to that specification.

The historic - option has been deprecated but is still supported in this implementation.

From man 8.0-current-20261101 in OpenBSD 8.0-current (2026-11-01). Parsed by carta from the page's mdoc source.