Chapter 1. Operating System Environment Variables
This chapter explains some of the environment variables that are used with the IRIX operating system.
To view a complete list of environment variables that are in use, type the following command in any shell window:
A list of all currently set environment variables appears in the shell window.
The specific environment variables that are set depend on the shell used (for example, korn shell or the c shell). However, the variables discussed in this chapter are often used regardless of shell.
1.1. Basic Operating System Environment Variables
| EDITOR | | The name of the user's preferred editor (such as vi).
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| HOME | | The full pathname of the user's home directory.
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| LOGNAME | | The user's login name.
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| MAIL | | Full name of the directory in which electronic mail files are located.
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| PAGER | | The default command used to page through information in a window.
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| PATH | | A list of directories to search for executable programs.
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| PRINTER | | The name of the default printer used for print jobs.
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| PWD | | The present, or current, working directory.
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| SHELL | | The current login shell.
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| TERM | | Name of the user's terminal. The TERM variable is listed in a table of terminals, describing the capabilities of the terminals on the network.
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| TZ | | The time zone for the machine.
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| USER | | The user's login name.
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1.2. Other Environment Variables
This section describes several other environment variables which are frequently included in the shell's start-up file.
| NNTPSERVER | | The name of the default news server.
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| TMPDIR | | The path where swap files and other temporary files are stored.
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| VISUAL | | Similar to the EDITOR environment variable, used to designate the preferred full screen text editor.
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| WEBBROWSER | | The path to the default browser for Web use.
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