Set shell environment variable via python script

Question

I have some instrument which requires environment variable which I want to set automatically from python code. So I tried several ways to make it happen, but none of them were successful. Here are some examples:

1. I insert following code in my python script

   import os
   os.system("export ENV_VAR=/some_path")
   

2. I created bash script(env.sh) and run it from python:

   #!/bin/bash
   export ENV_VAR=some_path
   
   #call it from python
   os.system("source env.sh")
   

3. I also tried os.putenv() and os.environ["ENV_VAR"] = "some_path"

Is it possible to set(export) environment variable using python, i.e without directly exporting it to shell?

Answer 1

A shell function may do this. You need to print your export statement and eval that.

set_shell_env() {
    output=$(python print_export_env.py $*)
    eval $output
}