Main Page | See live article | Alphabetical index

Export

Economics

In economics, an export is any good or commodity, shipped or otherwise transported out of a country, province, town to another part of the world, typically for use in trade or sale. Export products or services are provided to foreign consumers by domestic producers.

Export is the legitimate transportation of domestic or nationalized goods and services from a country intended for use or consumption rendered abroad. Exports can be any good that is shipped out of a government's border for commercial purposes. Exports are usually carried out under specific conditions.

Electronics

In computers, to export is to convert a file into a format other than the original format. Once exported, the file can be used by an application that recognizes the exported format. Some applications allow exporting files by specifying the file extension when using the "Save As..." command.

Sometimes, a separate export command allows for conversion of files to another standard file format. The current file is changed into a supported format. This is helpful when a user desires to import a dataset into another application program. Also in computers, it export can mean moving one dataset with the purpose of importing it into another file.

In Unix, export is a program that sets environment variables for use for the entire duration of the session, unless changed.