--env-file does not support inner quotes (does not behave like dotenv)

Version

v20.16.0

Platform

Darwin <redacted> 23.5.0 Darwin Kernel Version 23.5.0: Wed May  1 20:14:38 PDT 2024; root:xnu-10063.121.3~5/RELEASE_ARM64_T6020 arm64

Subsystem

No response

What steps will reproduce the bug?

inspired by this comment: #50814 (comment)

create an .env file:

INNER_QUOTES="1: foo'bar"baz`qux"
INNER_QUOTES_WITH_NEWLINE="2: foo bar\ni am "on" newline, 'yo'"

test with dotenv:

// envtest-dotenv.js
require("dotenv").config();
console.log(process.env.INNER_QUOTES);
console.log(process.env.INNER_QUOTES_WITH_NEWLINE);

$ node envtest-dotenv.js

test with --env-file

// envtest.js
console.log(process.envconsole.log(process.env.INNER_QUOTES);
console.log(process.env.INNER_QUOTES_WITH_NEWLINE);

$ node --env-file=.env envtest.js

How often does it reproduce? Is there a required condition?

always

What is the expected behavior? Why is that the expected behavior?

outputs should be the same.

// dotenv output:

1: foo'bar"baz`qux
2: foo bar
i am "on" newline, 'yo'

What do you see instead?

output are different, node native terminates at the first occurrence of the double quote:

// --env-file output
1: foo'bar
2: foo bar
i am

compare that to dotenv:

1: foo'bar"baz`qux
2: foo bar
i am "on" newline, 'yo'

Additional information

this makes it impossible to have env-variables that contain all three quotes (", ' and `) and newlines.
There is no alternative to inner quotes, because escaping quotes have been rejected src: add support for escaping quotes with escape slash in --env-file #50814
It's very problematic in many cases since depending on the quotes you are using, you need to use different outer quotes
i noticed that because i am writing some tooling that creates those .env files based on some other configuration. I just used double quotes as outer quotes and noticed that it fails when the string contains double quotes
be aware that dotenv also has a bug, when your string contains an actual newline (not "\n") AND has inner quotes, it will cut the string off at the line break. It works if the string does not contain inner quotes. It also works if you instead use "\n" instead of an actual line break. The output will still be the same and will have a real line break in it (as long as you put outer quotes around the string. without quotes, the \n will be literally in the output as "\n")

And

since the format is so problematic, maybe its time for a better format?

Pull requests are welcome

Pull requests are welcome

Hi, this is my first time contributing to Node.js, I will take this issue as my first contribution. I think this is a good starting place.

added additional information around dotenv and the implications of the bug

For reference, here are parsing rules from dotenv project page:

What rules does the parsing engine follow?

The parsing engine currently supports the following rules:

BASIC=basic becomes {BASIC: 'basic'}
empty lines are skipped
lines beginning with # are treated as comments
# marks the beginning of a comment (unless when the value is wrapped in quotes)
empty values become empty strings (EMPTY= becomes {EMPTY: ''})
inner quotes are maintained (think JSON) (JSON={"foo": "bar"} becomes {JSON:"{\"foo\": \"bar\"}")
whitespace is removed from both ends of unquoted values (see more on trim) (FOO= some value becomes {FOO: 'some value'})
single and double quoted values are escaped (SINGLE_QUOTE='quoted' becomes {SINGLE_QUOTE: "quoted"})
single and double quoted values maintain whitespace from both ends (FOO=" some value " becomes {FOO: ' some value '})
double quoted values expand new lines (MULTILINE="new\nline" becomes

source: https://github.com/motdotla/dotenv?tab=readme-ov-file#what-rules-does-the-parsing-engine-follow

There is one more invalid use case:

MP_#CRAZY_COMMENT="2: foo bar\ni am "on" newl\nine, 'yo'"

is parsed into env by Node, but dotenv skips it.

@anonrig

@anonrig @macrozone How strict do we want to be with dotenv compatibility? I've got a working fix that is handling all tests of dotenv. It improves compatibility and simplifies parser, but behaves differently with multiline "" values that have unbalanced ".

Covering all edge-cases of dotenv without using their regexp is pretty crazy.

Covering all edge-cases of dotenv without using their regexp is pretty crazy.

Agreed. We started following dotenv through their tests, but I think it's ok to diverge from there for extreme edge cases. I don't think we need to be 100% compliant with dotenv.

@anonrig

@anonrig @macrozone How strict do we want to be with dotenv compatibility? I've got a working fix that is handling all tests of dotenv. It improves compatibility and simplifies parser, but behaves differently with multiline "" values that have unbalanced ".

Covering all edge-cases of dotenv without using their regexp is pretty crazy.

I actually personally don't care about the compatiblitiy, but at the moment some env var values are absolutly impossible to declare. Namly one that contains: a line break, a double quote a backtick and a single quote. There is no way to declare such a env var.

Allowing to escape quotes would also solve it, but that was attempted and rejected because "its not compatible with dotenv".

I am also fine when it breaks with actual line breaks, since thats also bugged in dotenv. When using quotes you can encode line breaks with \n.

So if this works, it would be fine for me:

MY_VAR="singlequote: ', double quote: ", a line break: \n(i am on newline) and a backtick: `. that is all i need"

I agree that "a line break, a double quote, and a single quote" should be supported, and it is considered as a bug.

I agree that "a line break, a double quote, and a single quote" should be supported, and it is considered as a bug.

don't forget the backtick 😁 (woops, i forgot also to mentione it above)

Just tried your example:

.env file:

MP_MY_VAR="singlequote: ', double quote: ", a line break: \n(i am on newline) and a backtick: `. that is all i need"

dotenv:

MP_MY_VAR=singlequote: ', double quote: ", a line break: 
(i am on newline) and a backtick: `. that is all i need

my changes:

MP_MY_VAR=singlequote: ', double quote: ", a line break: 
(i am on newline) and a backtick: `. that is all i need

So it looks like it will handle it exactly like dotenv.

I already had to make it much more complex than needed to handle all other edge cases.
It would be such a simple parser if we only had to look for balanced double-quotes and newlines.

don't forget the backtick 😁 (woops, i forgot also to mentione it above)

Now we are getting away from reality, lol. What's the usecase/example of an environment variable that contains all of these characters?

@macrozone

@macrozone Added your case to tests and opened a PR: #54215

Now we are getting away from reality, lol. What's the usecase/example of an environment variable that contains all of these characters?

It should not be node's decision what is an allowed env var value and what not. An env var value is a string and any string should be somehow be encodeable in a .env file.

In my case I am writing tooling that creates those .env files on the fly in a ci/cd pipeline from another store. Those can be any strings and Its hard to mirror arbitrary decisions what are valid strings and what not. This is how I noticed those problems in the first place.

luckily fixing the inner quotes problem solves the issue.

(also in bash its no problem to declare such a variable thanks to escaping

MY_ENV_VAR="singlequote: ', double quote: \", a line break: 
(i am on newline) and a backtick: \`. that is all i need" node envtest.js

)

@macrozone

@macrozone Added your case to tests and opened a PR: #54215

thank you so much for your effort!

Can you also bring back the inline comments?

MY_VAR=dfadfad09845*?)!='^=++!+^. #inline comment

@marekpiechut

@marekpiechut It also skips lines that start with ;, which is standard for INI files.

Please assign me this issue. I want to fix this

Hey, I'd like to fix this bug. Kindly assign this to me.

You're free to open a pull-request.

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--env-file does not support inner quotes (does not behave like dotenv) #54134

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Platform

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What steps will reproduce the bug?

How often does it reproduce? Is there a required condition?

What is the expected behavior? Why is that the expected behavior?

What do you see instead?

Additional information

What rules does the parsing engine follow?

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--env-file does not support inner quotes (does not behave like dotenv) #54134

Description

Version

Platform

Subsystem

What steps will reproduce the bug?

How often does it reproduce? Is there a required condition?

What is the expected behavior? Why is that the expected behavior?

What do you see instead?

Additional information

Activity

anonrig commented on Jul 31, 2024

YutongZhuu commented on Jul 31, 2024

macrozone commented on Aug 2, 2024

marekpiechut commented on Aug 2, 2024

What rules does the parsing engine follow?

marekpiechut commented on Aug 2, 2024

marekpiechut commented on Aug 5, 2024

anonrig commented on Aug 5, 2024

macrozone commented on Aug 5, 2024

anonrig commented on Aug 5, 2024

macrozone commented on Aug 5, 2024

marekpiechut commented on Aug 5, 2024

anonrig commented on Aug 5, 2024

marekpiechut commented on Aug 5, 2024

macrozone commented on Aug 5, 2024

macrozone commented on Aug 5, 2024

atilkan commented on Jan 21, 2025

vitaly-t commented on Jun 16, 2025

blessyparida commented on Sep 16, 2025

divya4234 commented on Sep 16, 2025

anonrig commented on Sep 16, 2025

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