Setting an environment variable before a command in Bash is not working for the second command in a pipe

FOO=bar bash -c 'somecommand someargs | somecommand2'

How about exporting the variable, but only inside the subshell?:

(export FOO=bar && somecommand someargs | somecommand2)

Keith has a point, to unconditionally execute the commands, do this:

(export FOO=bar; somecommand someargs | somecommand2)

You can also use eval:

FOO=bar eval 'somecommand someargs | somecommand2'

Since this answer with eval doesn't seem to please everyone, let me clarify something: when used as written, with the single quotes, it is perfectly safe. It is good as it will not launch an external process (like the accepted answer) nor will it execute the commands in an extra subshell (like the other answer).

As we get a few regular views, it's probably good to give an alternative to eval that will please everyone, and has all the benefits (and perhaps even more!) of this quick eval “trick”. Just use a function! Define a function with all your commands:

mypipe() {
    somecommand someargs | somecommand2
}

and execute it with your environment variables like this:

FOO=bar mypipe

Use env.

For example, env FOO=BAR command. Note that the environment variables will be restored/unchanged again when command finishes executing.

Just be careful about about shell substitution happening, i.e. if you want to reference $FOO explicitly on the same command line, you may need to escape it so that your shell interpreter doesn't perform the substitution before it runs env.

$ export FOO=BAR
$ env FOO=FUBAR bash -c 'echo $FOO'
FUBAR
$ echo $FOO
BAR

A simple approach is to make use of ;

For example:

ENV=prod; ansible-playbook -i inventories/$ENV --extra-vars "env=$ENV"  deauthorize_users.yml --check

command1; command2 executes command2 after executing command1, sequentially. It does not matter whether the commands were successful or not.

Use a shell script:

#!/bin/bash
# myscript
FOO=bar
somecommand someargs | somecommand2

> ./myscript