Making a Shell Variable Read Only

Being inherently lazy, I am always a sucker for shortcuts, neat tricks to cut my work and, most important, not to do the same thing again and again. Here is a tip I find useful.

Have you ever been frustrated to find that some line has changed some important shell variable such as ORACLE_BASE inside a shell script? The list of variables that are important to safety and efficiency of your shell is a long one - PS1, ORACLE_BASE, PATH, and so on. Using this little known command, you can easily "protect" a variable. The trick is to make it readonly. First, set the variable:

# export ORACLE_BASE=/opt/oracle

Then make it readonly:

# readonly ORACLE_BASE

Now if you want to set it:

# export ORACLE_BASE=/opt/oracle1
-bash: ORACLE_BASE: readonly variable

You can't. You can't even unset the variable:

# unset ORACLE_BASE
-bash: unset: ORACLE_BASE: cannot unset: readonly variable

This is a cool way to protect important variables.

To get a list of variables that are readonly, use

# declare -r
declare -ar BASH_VERSINFO='([0]="3" [1]="00" [2]="15" [3]="1" [4]="release" [5]="i386-redhat-linux-gnu")'
declare -ir EUID="500"
declare -rx ORACLE_BASE="/opt/oracle"
declare -ir PPID="13204"
declare -r SHELLOPTS="braceexpand:emacs:hashall:histexpand:history:interactive-comments:monitor"
declare -ir UID="500"

Unfortunately there is no comamnd to make it readwrite.

In the same way, you can also prevent a specific variable not to be set. LD_LIBRARY_PATH should not be set during some type of installations. To force it that way:

# export LD_LIBRARY_PATH
# readonly LD_LIBRARY_PATH

Now if you want to assign a value:

# export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=d
-bash: LD_LIBRARY_PATH: readonly variable

You will not be able to. You can also achieve the same goal by:

# declare -r LD_LIBRARY_PATH=

I hope you find it useful.