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Eddiefiggie
Asked: 2019-04-06 17:22:08 +0800 CST

Can't remove environmental variable in Ubuntu 18.04

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I have set my environmental variable $JAVA_HOME within the /etc/environment file. Worked like a charm! Now I want to remove it. After removing the line completely from the environment file, then do a reboot, it continues to resolve the path on:

echo $JAVA_HOME

How do I clean that out?

environment-variables java 18.04

1 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    $JAVA_HOME will already have a definition on many systems without explicitly declaring it in /etc/environment:

    $ echo $JAVA_HOME
/usr/lib/jvm/java-8-oracle

    That said, the unset command will eliminate a variable. From: Unix / Linux - Using Shell Variables

    Unsetting Variables

    Unsetting or deleting a variable directs the shell to remove the variable from the list of variables that it tracks. Once you unset a variable, you cannot access the stored value in the variable.

    Following is the syntax to unset a defined variable using the unset command −

    unset variable_name

    The above command unsets the value of a defined variable. Here is a simple example that demonstrates how the command works −

    #!/bin/sh

NAME="Zara Ali"
unset NAME
echo $NAME

    In our case we can use:

    $ echo $JAVA_HOME
/usr/lib/jvm/java-8-oracle
───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
$ unset JAVA_HOME
───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
$ echo $JAVA_HOME

───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
$
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