# Environment variables

**URL:** <https://forums.suse.com/t/environment-variables/6212>\
**Category:** Rancher 1.x\
**Created:** [April 21, 2017, 2:56pm UTC](https://forums.suse.com/t/environment-variables/6212 "2017-04-21T14:56:08Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Listener\_me](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex022/user_avatar/forums.suse.com/listener_me/32/5836_2.png) [@Listener\_me](https://forums.suse.com/u/Listener_me)\
**Post date:** [April 21, 2017, 2:56pm UTC](https://forums.suse.com/t/environment-variables/6212/1 "2017-04-21T14:56:08Z")

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Hello,

I have experienced some issues while using environment variables through docker-compose.yml in rancher. For an example, (URI=“mysql://DBUSER:DBPASS@DBHOST:DBPORT/DBNAME”). Its working through docker CLI, but its through errors similar to “cant parse the string” while deploying through rancher catalogs. I have tried to use each variable in double quotes and still throwing error. When I split it up with multiple ones, its working. Is there any restriction related to length of string or special characters that we can use inside the docker-compose.yml? We may thinking of passing URLs as environment variables, which may consists of special characters. Is that possible?

Thanks