How to load .env in Bash.

Given file .env:

FOO=bar
BIZ=buzz

Load into current process. Note this is not available to subshells.

source .env

Or load it in the current process and export for subshells.

export $(<.env | xargs)

Use cat .env instead of <.env if you prefer.

If the file is optional:

if [ ! -f .env ]; then
  export $(cat .env | xargs)
fi

Check the value after running any approach above:

echo $FOO

We use xargs above as it splits the multiple lines in the file as separate experts.

Here is how it looks as a simpler view. Printing without and with quotes.

$ x=$(<.env) 

$ echo $x
FOO=bar BIZ=buzz

$ echo "$x"
FOO=bar 
BIZ=buzz

If your dotenv file has comment lines in it, then source .env will be okay but export won’t.

So here we remove comment lines.

if [ -f .env ]; then
  export $(cat .env | sed 's/#.*//g' | xargs)
fi