Sharing Variables across sub shell scripts

Question

I have a Main shell that runs a profile, The profile contains some variables such as Count. When I call the main shell, it loads the profile and then call another shell script. I want that inner shell script be able to access the variable count that the main shell script loaded already. How can I do that ? I tried export but only helped in one level variable import.

Answer 1

export allows variables defined in a process, to be read in sub process, but if variable is modified in sub process, the variable will not change in caller process, because each process has it's own environment variables. Maybe a solution can be the sub shell to write to output and caller shell to read ouput.

count=$(subprocess)

Answer 2

Don't call the inner scripts as separate processes, call them as included scripts.

. /path/to/inner_script

Scripts read through the . (dot) built-in (also available under the name source in bash) are executed in the same shell environment as the caller. In particular, they share variables.