title: How does this example of passing environment variables in linux to node work?
body: <p>I read and verified that I can pass environment variables to node by doing something like:</p>
  
  <pre><code>MY_ENV_VAR1=/tmp MY_ENV_VAR2=/data node index.js
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>How on earth does that work? I've only seen arguments to a script come after the script name, not before.</p>
  
  <p>Thanks!</p>