FAQ: Environment - Environment Variables

This community-built FAQ covers the “Environment Variables” exercise from the lesson “Environment”.

Paths and Courses
This exercise can be found in the following Codecademy content:

Web Development

Learn the Command Line

FAQs on the exercise Environment Variables

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Anyone know how to use the ctrl key on iPad Pro Smart Keyboard? Can’t save or exit out of nano without it.

it says the last thing to type is

ls -alt

and notice the change in the prompt. But i cant tell the difference? What am i supposed to be looking our for?

In the Lingua Franca exercise, the “LESS” env variable was automatically done when we ran the less command on a file. Are env variables always automatically applied to our commands?

The prompt is the console signalling you to give it some much wanted orders.

In the standard case that’s the “$”-sign at the beginning of a line telling you that the console awaits you to do something.
In this exercise you modified that to be ">> ", which should show at the beginning of the line.

Not trying to smart-■■■, but isn’t this:
“Here, the command echo $USER returns the name set for the variable.” (Last line before the instructions)
wrong?

Shouldn’t it rather say “Here, the command ‘echo $USER’ returns the value stored in the variable.”?
I’m no native speaker, but this would seem to be the less misleading choice in wording, doesn’t it?

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