In order to quickly check the settings of environment variables I've created a simple python shell utility to do that for me.
I called the utility evar for "environment variable". It lets me put a list of environment variable behind the script name and have my environment checked for the presence of each of them in by upper and lower case forms.
Example:
[gail@gail]$ evar home AFWE qwer foo HOME /home/gail AFWE IS NOT SET QWER IS NOT SET FOO FOOOOO foo bar
Additionally, when we get long path listings it can be difficult to find the element we are searching for with all of the elements on one line. So in the script I check for the presence of colons ':' in the line then format the print output so that there is one element to a line. This breaks up the path so that it can be more easily read and make it easier to find the elements we are looking for.
That means that two variables defined as:
[gail@gail]$ echo $FOO FOOOOO [gail@gail]$ echo $foo asdf:qwerqwer:zxcvzxcv
Will look like this when formatted by evar:
[gail@gail]$ evar foo
FOO FOOOOO
foo
asdf
qwerqwer
zxcvzxcv
The script's listing follows. You can do what you what you want with the formatting. I like the breathing room and the ordered lay out.
#!/usr/bin/python
import os, sys, re
print
for ii in sys.argv[1:]:
var = ii.upper()
if var not in os.environ and ii not in os.environ:
print "%-30s %-40s" % (var,'IS NOT SET')
if var in os.environ:
mvar = os.environ[var]
if re.search(':',mvar):
print var
for val in mvar.split(':'):
print "%-30s %-40s" % ('',val)
else:
pvar = os.environ[var]
print "%-30s %-40s" % (var,pvar)
if ii in os.environ:
mvar = os.environ[ii]
if re.search(':',mvar) is not None:
print ii
for val in mvar.split(':'):
print "%-30s %-40s" % ('',val)
else:
pvar = os.environ[ii]
print "%-30s %-40s" % (ii,pvar)
print