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YAML to Bash Converter — Free Online

YAML to Bash Exports Converter

Paste YAML and get a block of export statements you can source in a shell script, a Dockerfile RUN step or a CI job. Conversion runs in your browser; nothing is uploaded.

How the conversion works

  • Each setting becomes export NAME='value'.
  • Nested keys are joined with underscores and uppercased: app.port becomes APP_PORT.
  • List items get an index suffix — DATABASE_REPLICAS_0, DATABASE_REPLICAS_1 — because a name like DATABASE_REPLICAS[0] is rejected by export.
  • Values are single-quoted, so $, backticks and spaces are taken literally and never expanded by the shell. A single quote inside a value is written safely as '\''.
  • null becomes an empty string.
  • Names are valid identifiers (my-app becomes MY_APP), and colliding names are reported in a # warning: comment at the top. Dates, {} and [] are kept, never dropped.
  • The Options bar sets key case, separator, prefix, whether to write export, and whether lists become declare -a NAME=('a' 'b') arrays.

Example

app:
  name: demo
  port: 8080
database:
  replicas: [db2, db3]

becomes

export APP_NAME='demo'
export APP_PORT='8080'
export DATABASE_REPLICAS_0='db2'
export DATABASE_REPLICAS_1='db3'

Using the output

# save the output as config.sh, then:
source ./config.sh
echo "$APP_NAME is on port $APP_PORT"

Variables set with export are inherited by every program the script starts, which is how most tools read configuration.

.env or Bash exports?

Use the YAML to .env converter for files read by dotenv libraries, Docker --env-file or Compose. Use Bash exports when the file is sourced by a shell — dotenv files don't need export, and some dotenv loaders reject single-quoted values with escapes.