Shell Programming and Scripting

I have a question about how to change variables in parent shell.

My script, test.sh, is below:

#!/bin/sh
# test.sh
PATH=.

The commands I ran for test:

$ echo $PATH
.:/usr/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/local/sbin:
$ sh test.sh
$ echo $PATH
.:/usr/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/local/sbin:

Note that when I run sh test.sh, the variable PATH was not changed. I know that I can run . test.sh to make it change PATH. But for some reason I have to run sh test.sh. So in this case, how to make child process change the variables in parent process?

Thanks.

The parent shell can't inherit variables from the child but you can run your script in the current shell with (first make your script executable):

Code:

. scriptname

or if you have the source command on your system:

Code:

source scriptname

Regards