varz

export FOO=bar works right now but vanishes when you close the terminal. Adding it to ~/.zshrc manually works but is tedious and error-prone.

varz set FOO bar does both in one command — applies the change immediately to your current shell session and persists it automatically across future sessions.

It also gives you a searchable, colored overview of all your environment variables with automatic masking of secrets like API keys and tokens.

Features

• Set and unset variables in the current shell session and persist them automatically
• List all environment variables sorted alphabetically
• Search variables by name with case-insensitive matching and highlighted results
• Mask values for keys that appear to contain secrets (API keys, tokens, passwords)
• File-based shell integration with no eval of binary output at runtime

Installation

Requires current stable Rust (2024 edition, rustc 1.94+).

From crates.io (recommended):

cargo install varz

From source:

git clone https://github.com/oharlem/varz
cd varz
cargo install --path .

Directly from GitHub:

cargo install --git https://github.com/oharlem/varz

All methods install to ~/.cargo/bin. If needed, add it to your PATH:

export PATH="$HOME/.cargo/bin:$PATH"

Shell setup

bash / zsh — add to ~/.zshrc or ~/.bashrc:

eval "$(varz --init)"

fish — add to ~/.config/fish/config.fish:

varz --init fish | source

Then reload your shell config (e.g. source ~/.zshrc or open a new terminal).

This installs a shell function that wraps the varz binary. When you run varz set or varz unset, the binary writes directives to a session-scoped mailbox file, and the shell function reads and applies them — no eval of binary output at runtime. The mailbox is ephemeral and cleaned up when the session ends. Only ~/.varz_env persists across sessions.

Without this setup, varz set and varz unset still persist changes to ~/.varz_env but cannot modify the current shell session. A manual fallback command is printed instead.

Usage

varz                     List all environment variables
varz <PATTERN>           Search environment variables by name
varz set KEY VALUE       Set in the current shell and persist to ~/.varz_env
varz unset KEY           Unset in the current shell and remove from ~/.varz_env
varz --init [SHELL]      Print shell integration code (bash, zsh, fish)
varz --version           Show version
varz --help              Show help

Examples

# List and search
varz
varz OPEN
varz AWS

# Set and verify
varz set OPENAI_API_KEY 'sk-proj-abc123'
varz set GREETING 'hello world'
varz OPEN

# Remove
varz unset OPENAI_API_KEY

Security

~/.varz_env is created with mode 0600 (owner read/write only), consistent with ~/.aws/credentials, ~/.npmrc, and ~/.netrc. If the file has looser permissions, varz prints a warning on every invocation.

Values are stored in plain text — the same model as the tools listed above. The file lives at ~/.varz_env rather than ~/.config/varz/ to reduce the chance of it being accidentally committed in a dotfiles repo. A future release may add optional OS keychain integration for stronger protection against accidental file exposure.

Displayed values are automatically masked for keys containing: key, secret, token, password, passwd, pwd, or auth.

Notes

• Quote values containing spaces or special shell characters: varz set GREETING 'hello world'
• If the same key is exported elsewhere in your rc file, normal shell ordering applies — a later export wins, including over values from ~/.varz_env
• After upgrading varz, re-source your shell rc or open a new terminal to pick up the latest init output

License

Licensed under the MIT license.