How to retrieve environment variable from string name in KSH

Question

I've the following variable :

x="envVar"

and 'envVar' is the one of my environment variable's name containing a path (of a folder by instance). So I'd like to do

cd $x

but it doesn't work. How can I do to use x's value as the environment variable ?

I wasn't able to make it work with "eval".

possible duplicate of How achieve variable indirection (refer to a variable whose name is stored in another variable) in tcsh — Joseph R., Nov 14, 2013 at 15:28
@JosephR. Regarding not deleting of duplicates: they're usually useful search fodder, see Handling duplicate questions, Do not delete duplicates!, etc. Regarding this question specifically, while there is one answer that works for both, that doesn't make the questions duplicate: questions are only duplicate if any good answer for one also works for the other, which is not the case here (e.g. no nameref in tcsh). — Gilles 'SO- stop being evil', Nov 15, 2013 at 0:32

glenn jackman · Accepted Answer · 2013-11-14 20:38:33Z

2

If you have ksh 93, you can declare x to be a reference to a variable name:

$ ksh --version
  version         sh (AT&T Research) 93u+ 2012-08-01
$ ksh -c '
    envVar=foo
    x=envVar
    nameref x
    echo $x
'
foo

answered Nov 14, 2013 at 20:38

glenn jackman

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