Bash evironment variables cannot have values starting from a digit? - bash

Question

I have an environment variable in bash and want to set its value to a string starting from a digit.
But in the shell you have to create the variables, and then export them so they go to the environment. Is there a way to put some value into shell's environment without touching variables, or maybe create a variable whose value starts with a digit?

Answer 1

The only way I could think of was by starting a new shell using env:
env 0FOO=BAR /usr/bin/bash
I tried this under Cygwin and it seemed to work.

Answer 2

The only valid beginning character types for bash variables are letters and underscores.

Answer 3

Why do you want to do this? You can do:
export _1="some value"
or
export a1="some value"
The reason that you can't do what you're asking is that a variable like "$1" would be confused with the positional parameter $1.

Answer 4

The processing required is fiddly and tedious and not dreadfully sensible, but (in outline, error checks on malloc() omitted):
char **env = environ;
while (*env != 0)
*env++;
char **newenv = malloc((env - environ + 1) * sizeof(*newenv));
memcpy(newenv, environ, (env - environ) * sizeof(char *));
newenv[env - environ] = "386=pygmalion";
newenv[env - environ + 1] = 0;
char *args[] = { "modded-env-bash", 0 };
execve("/bin/bash", args, newenv);
exit(1);