Cannot set environment variable on my macOS Big Sur 11.4

Question

I'm trying to set just specific env variable:

export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=mqlibs/lib64
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$LD_LIBRARY_PATH:mqlibs/lib64
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH="mqlibs/lib64"

It doesn't work wherever I set it. (in .bashrc or .bash_profile or just in Terminal) But this simple one does work:

export aaa=test

what am I doing wrong?

The above works for me in my Mac. do you mean in terminal after you do export , and then do echo, it does not show? — abhishek phukan, Jun 04 '21 at 17:16
yes.. In terminal.. but also tried to put it in .bashrc and .bash_profile and restart terminal/system export aaa=test does work — John Glabb, Jun 04 '21 at 17:20
dumb question #1: are you using bash and not zsh? dumb question #2: after you edited your bash dotfiles, did you `source` them? — glenn jackman, Jun 04 '21 at 17:35
#1: bash, #2: I just restart my system. Should I do source ~/.bash_profile — John Glabb, Jun 04 '21 at 18:22

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Jun 04 '21 at 21:57

You asked "what am I doing wrong?" Your first mistake is not clearly describing the problem :-) Saying "it doesn't work" doesn't tell us much. What did you expect and what did you observe? All of the export statements work for me in as much as they create an env var with the expected value.

Your main problem is that LD_LIBRARY_PATH has no special meaning on macOS. You should use DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH instead. See man dlopen and related S.O. questions like Is it OK to use DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH on Mac OS X? And, what's the dynamic library search algorithm with it?.

Cannot set environment variable on my macOS Big Sur 11.4

1 Answers1