Defining a variable with or without export

Question

What is export for?

What is the difference between:

export name=value

and

name=value

Answer 1

Just to show the difference between an exported variable being in the environment (env) and a non-exported variable not being in the environment:

If I do this:

$ MYNAME=Fred
$ export OURNAME=Jim

then only $OURNAME appears in the env. The variable $MYNAME is not in the env.

$ env | grep NAME
OURNAME=Jim

but the variable $MYNAME does exist in the shell

$ echo $MYNAME
Fred