Unable to fetch the environment variables exported through subprocess

Question

I have a shell script which exports some credentials.

BHUKRK848D:~ ranip.hore$ cat cred.ksh
export ORACLE_UID_MD="abcd"
export ORACLE_PWD_MD="welcome"

I am trying to execute the shell script from a python script using subprocess and on trying to get the exported variables using os.environ from the python script, I am unable to retrieve them.

Below is the code snippet I am executing :

BHUKRK848D:~ ranip.hore$ cat demo.py
import os
import subprocess
subprocess.call("sh cred.ksh",shell=True)
print(os.environ.get("ORACLE_UID_MD",None))

BHUKRK848D:~ ranip.hore$ python demo.py 
None

Is it due to the reason that the variables are exported in a different process and from script while fetching it is trying from some separate process? If i execute the export commands manually from terminal and run the python command it is able to fetch the credentials.

Please look at https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1214496/how-to-get-environment-from-a-subprocess-in-python — Harly Hallikas, Oct 23 '18 at 11:28
Possible duplicate of [How to get environment from a subprocess in Python](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1214496/how-to-get-environment-from-a-subprocess-in-python) — Carlos Gonzalez, Oct 23 '18 at 11:34
What OS are you using? Please at least tag your question with that information. — martineau, Oct 23 '18 at 11:42
What you want to do may be impossible, see [this answer](https://stackoverflow.com/a/1214515/355230) to a related question. — martineau, Oct 23 '18 at 12:00
Then the only way is to parse the credential ksh file to extract the values. — raniphore, Oct 23 '18 at 18:12

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Oct 23 '18 at 18:12

Environment variables are inherited downwards by subprocess, but it doesn't propagate upwards to the parent process. Setting environment variables in a subprocess don't affect the environment variables of the parent process.

You'll have to parse the environment variables from the file instead of executing it.

Unable to fetch the environment variables exported through subprocess

1 Answers1