How to set an environment variable with a '$' in the value in Elastic Beanstalk?

Question

When I enter a value that has a dollar sign $ the environment only reads the first part of it, and that's because the env file generated puts double quotes in the values instead of single quotes. Any way around that? The value can't be changed because it's an access token from a service I don't control.

Example:

The env file generated is like: export MY_VAR="my$value"

Running that results in: MY_VAR=my

Answer 1

Either escape the dollar signs with three backslashes (works using either the web console or the command line):

eb setenv -e my-environment MY_VARIABLE=\\\$foobar

Or with a strong quotes ('') you would only have to use one backslash to escape:

eb setenv -e my-environment MY_VARIABLE='\$foobar'

Answer 2

It is evaluating $value as a variable and converting it to an empty string since that variable doesn't exist in the environment. Try escaping the $ character like this:

export MY_VAR="my\$value"

Alternatively, use single quotes which should prevent variable expansion:

export MY_VAR='my$value'