setting env vars does not expand other env vars

[rkitover]

E.g., this does not work:

PATH=$HOME/.local/bin:/usr/bin

, the PATH gets set to the literal value $HOME/.local/bin:/usr/bin.

No idea if this is intended or not, possibly could be an enhancement if you think it would be worthwhile.

I was setting variables like this for years and only just now noticed that this does not work.

[t8m]

Yes, this is not working and never was.

[rkitover]

I could do a PR to implement this.

The implementation I was thinking of was opening a pipe to /bin/sh, sending the variable assignment statements in the order they were written then reading them back out. What do you think?

[t8m]

Ugh, that would be seriously ugly so IMO no, not this way.

There is actually already an expand_envvar() function in cronie_common.c which could be used to expand the envvar when setting it. Currently it is used only for MAILTO and MAILFROM variables when invoking the mail.