Passing one shell script variable to another shell script

Question

I am trying to access one script variable from another script for example,

script1.sh:

export a=10
export b=20
echo "testing"
exit

script2.sh:

. script1.sh
echo $a

The problem involved here is its able to access the variable 'a' from the script1 in script2 but its executing all the commands written in script1.sh which is annoying. I just want to access only the exported variables in script1 and donot want to run the commands in script1 while calling that in script2.

Kindly help!

Thanks,
Karthik

Answer 1

What you are trying to do (only get the variables from another script, without executing the commands) is not possible.

Here is a workaround:

Extract the variable declaration and initialisation to a third file, which is then sourced by both.

common-vars:

export a=10
export b=20

script1.sh:

. common-vars
echo "testing"
exit

script2.sh:

. common-vars
echo $a