Question

Assigning a multiline string to FOO works as expected:

$ read -d '' FOO <<"EOF"
> the content
> EOF
$ echo $FOO
the content
$ python -c "import os; print os.environ.get('FOO')"
the content

Seemingly the same thing with FOO_BAR_BAZ works differently:

$ read -d '' FOO_BAR_BAZ <<"EOF"
> the content
> EOF
$ echo $FOO_BAR_BAZ
the content
$ python -c "import os; print os.environ.get('FOO_BAR_BAZ')"
None

I either have a subtle error or a misunderstanding.

Answer 1

Did you export FOO but not export FOO_BAR_BAZ? Environment variables will only be visible to child processes (like Python) if they’ve been exported.