bash: export: `-Xmx512m': not a valid identifier when I set MAVEN_OPTS variable

Question

I'm on OpenSuse, I'm following this tutorial to set up Maven.

When I ran this :

export MAVEN_OPTS=-Xms256m -Xmx512m

I got the following error:

bash: export: `-Xmx512m': not a valid identifier

I've followed that tutorial's steps, the Maven I downloaded is Version 3.5.2.

Answer 1

The space in between both options makes the shell interpret this as two different arguments. You need to protect the options with quotes:

export MAVEN_OPTS="-Xms256m -Xmx512m"

Answer 2

You need quotes around the value, as it contains a space.

export MAVEN_OPTS="-Xms256m -Xmx512m"