assign array value to ENV var on .env file

Question

I need to set an array of strings on my .env file and cant find information about the right syntax. Test for this takes quite a while so I wanted to save some time. Some of this options should work:

MY_ARRAY=[first_string, second_string]
MY_ARRAY=[first_string second_string]
MY_ARRAY=['first_string', 'second_string']

Can someone tell me which?

Answer 1

As far as I know dotenv does not allow setting anything except strings (and multiline strings). The parser syntax is:

LINE = /
  \A
  (?:export\s+)?    # optional export
  ([\w\.]+)         # key
  (?:\s*=\s*|:\s+?) # separator
  (                 # optional value begin
    '(?:\'|[^'])*'  #   single quoted value
    |               #   or
    "(?:\"|[^"])*"  #   double quoted value
    |               #   or
    [^#\n]+         #   unquoted value
  )?                # value end
  (?:\s*\#.*)?      # optional comment
  \z
/x

The reason behind this is shell and OS support for setting other types of env variables is spotty.

You could use a separator such as commas or pipes (|) and split the string with ENV['FOO'].split('|'). But maybe what you are trying to do should be solved with an initializer which combines ENV vars.